Will the racino morph into a megacasino to help the northern tribes? Senate Republican leader Dick Day and the owners of Canterbury Park announced their new racino plan Wednesday. It now features 3,000 slots, blackjack and a guaranteed upfront payment to the state of $100 million. the plan promises about $100 million annually to the state. In the Pioneer Press Patrick Sweeney raises the possibilty of a supersized hybrid of casino and racino:

Publicly and privately, legislative leaders said Pawlenty's casino and the Canterbury plan may be merged into one bill, and perhaps into one operation that would be built at the racetrack.

Pawlenty on Wednesday repeated the statement he made Friday that he was open to merging the two casino plans and constructing the state-Indian gambling operation at the track.

Two of Canterbury's top stockholders — Curt and Randy Sampson — said Wednesday they have not discussed combining the plans with the tribes. However, they said they would try to make that merger work if legislators insist on it.

"Everybody's going to have to take a little bit smaller piece of the pie," Randy Sampson said of a merger of the proposals. He is Canterbury's president. His father, Curt, is chairman of the board of Canterbury Park Holding Corp., the publicly held company that owns the track.

Of the hypothetical pie, that is. Day has four DFL co-sponsors, but that might not be enough to pass the racino in the Senate.

While the governor is trying to raise revenue from a casino he wants to make it a little harder for local governments to raise money the old fashioned way, by collecting taxes. He and Rep. Phil Krinke put a little flesh on the bones of the "turbocharged truth in taxation" plan he first announced in his State of the State speech back in January. In the Star Tribune Dane Smith explains how it would work:

Attached to the bottom of the annual notices of planned property tax changes -- the truth in taxation notices, mailed in November -- would be a simple new survey designed to determine whether taxpayers are satisfied with the city's and county's proposed tax levy.

The detachable form would ask taxpayers two questions:

"Are you satisfied with the proposed property tax levy?" for the county and for the city in which the property is located.

The proposal would not apply to school districts.

If the number of mailed-in "no" responses exceeded 20 percent of the total parcels of property in the jurisdiction, a referendum would be triggered, and voters would be able to choose between two options: the proposed levy, almost always an increase, or freezing it at the prior year's level. Property owners would get a vote on the triggering mechanism for each parcel they own, meaning those with more than one parcel would get more than one vote. Renters would not vote.

Of course local governments don't like the plan. They say renters shouldn't be excluded from voting, and that most budget issues are more complicated than a simple yes or no question. Because Krinke chairs the House Tax Committee there's little doubt this issue will be debated on the House floor. Prospects in the DFL controlled-Senate are a little more murky.

Remember when Gov. Pawlenty rolled out that Web site where people could make suggestions about balancing the budget? MPR's Laura McCallum does. She went back and looked at the results.

Sixty-six percent of respondents wanted the state to spend more money on K-12 education, and just over half supported more money for higher education. While the responses are not a scientific sample, Pawlenty spokesman Brian McClung said the governor did consider the feedback when putting his budget together.

"Education is a priority, and we know that. The governor feels the same way. That's why he's tried to focus our resources on boosting K-12 education, that schools could have up to an 8 percent increase if they do performance pay and some other things over the next two years in this budget. Higher education is extremely important. That was an area of high priority for the governor as well," he said.

About a third of respondents wanted to spend more money on health and human services programs. But the budget exercise didn't allow respondents to raise taxes, so if they increased spending in one area, they had to cut spending in another. About 40 percent said they would cut agriculture spending, while about a third would cut local government aid.

Some Democrats say Pawlenty's budget doesn't reflect the priorities from his own Web site. Senate Majority Leader Dean Johnson of Willmar says Pawlenty's budget falls short in the areas citizens listed as most important.

"The third issue here is human services and the governor is making substantial cut in human services. The governor is saying he wants to put more money into education, but it's a penny when he needs a dime." he said.

Be sure to check out MPR's Budget Balancer. We tried to lay out a range of options on the spending and taxing side and give you some background on what the choices entail. Let me know what you think of it.