HARRISBURG -- Gov. Ed Rendell yesterday signed a bill that local and state leaders hope will clinch a Westinghouse Electric Co. expansion that could add another 1,500 high-paying jobs to the region.

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The bill, passed earlier this month by the Legislature, will create up to four so-called "Strategic Development Areas" around the state that provide a 15-year abatement on sales taxes, corporate net income taxes and corporate stock and franchise taxes to large companies that stay in Pennsylvania.

State and area lawmakers, as well as Allegheny County Chief Executive Dan Onorato and the Allegheny Conference on Community Development, pushed hard for the bill's passage, saying it was key to keeping Westinghouse in its home region.

"Westinghouse has not yet made a decision to stay in Pennsylvania, but we believe this [tax abatement bill] will increase the strong likelihood that Westinghouse will stay in Western Pennsylvania and add jobs," Mr. Rendell, flanked by state Sen. Sean Logan, D-Monroeville, and Rep. Mike Turzai, R-Bradford Woods, said at a news conference at the bill's signing.

Monroeville-based Westinghouse, which already employs about 3,000 in the region, wants to build a new engineering campus to accommodate expected growth in the nuclear plant business.

It has narrowed its search to three sites in Western Pennsylvania and a site near Charlotte, N.C. Westinghouse spokesman Vaughn Gilbert said a decision will likely be announced by the end of the year.

Mr. Rendell "and other elected officials, including Dan Onorato, have been highly supportive of our effort," Mr. Gilbert said, adding, "We're in a growth business."

After years of no new plant orders, Westinghouse has seen a surge in business, with a number of domestic energy companies announcing plans for new nuclear plants that still must clear regulatory hurdles. In addition, it's in the running to build four and potentially dozens more new plants in China.

Mr. Gilbert said Westinghouse hired 800 new people last year, will hire 900 more this year, and expects to hire a minimum of 500 new workers in succeeding years because of a growing need for nuclear power and the number of workers ready for retirement.

Mr. Turzai said the three sites in the Pittsburgh area that are under consideration include Westinghouse's current headquarters in Monroeville, the Tech 21 industrial park in Marshall and at Cranberry Woods in Butler County.

Mr. Logan said the Westinghouse expansion project is important because it involves well-paying jobs -- salaries of up to $100,000 or so a year with required technical, administrative and engineering expertise.

Westinghouse, a former conglomerate whose technology is used in half of the world's operating nuclear power plants, was sold last month by British Nuclear Fuels PLC to Japanese electronics giant Toshiba.

The first two Strategic Development Areas to be created by the new bill would be in the Pittsburgh area for the proposed Westinghouse expansion and in the Lehigh Valley of Eastern Pennsylvania for AmGen, a biotechnical company that may locate there.

The Strategic Development Area program is something like an existing economic development incentive program called Keystone Opportunity Zones. But the latter applies only to older industrial sites called "brownfields," where state and local taxes are waived for a few years as a way of enticing a company to come in.

The new program pertains to "greenfields," or undeveloped sites which normally don't need tax incentives to attract developers. Lawmakers felt that, because of the importance of retaining a company and persuading it to expand, the use of the incentives outweighs the downside of the loss of state taxes.

Mr. Rendell said the use of Strategic Development Areas will be very limited so as not to overdo the abatement of taxes. The total of four areas can't exceed 5,000 acres in size, and an individual development area can't exceed 1,500 acres in size.