AUGUSTA – State officials indicated Monday that circulators who were paid to gather signatures for a tribal citizen initiative to bring slot machines to Washington County may have forged names taken from tombstones.

Addressing members of the Legislature’s Legal and Veterans Affairs Committee, Deputy Secretary of State Julie Flynn confirmed the irregularities while the panel reviewed a bill aimed in part at revising the citizen initiative process.

“A focus of the investigation into the recent [racino] petition that was turned in is that there were a couple of people who had died before the date of their signature on the petition,” Flynn said.

The Passamaquoddy Tribe submitted more than 60,500 signatures to place its racino question on the November ballot. Nearly 13,000 signatures, a little more than 21 percent of the total, were invalidated for a variety of reasons, such as duplication or because the person signing was not registered to vote. Flynn did not specify Monday how many were invalidated because of forgery.

Officials at the Secretary of State’s Office have indicated the percentage of disqualified signatures is not unusual when compared to other referendum issues.

But supporters of the plan have acknowledged that at least one signature gatherer was fired for failing to do the job properly. Flynn agreed Monday with one LVA committee member who suggested it was possible the tribe had paid as much as $40,000 to signature gatherers.

Now lawmakers and state officials are wondering whether the racino backers’ practice of paying $2 to $2.50 per signature should be re-examined. The Legislature outlawed per-signature payments in 1994, but the U.S. District Court threw out the ban in 1999, concluding there was no evidence that the per-signature payments encouraged fraud. Four states prohibit per-signature payments on citizen-initiated petitions but permit signature gatherers to be paid by the hour.

“That’s something we could consider within this bill [LD 2029],” said Sen. Ken Gagnon, co-chairman of the LVA committee. “Personally, I don’t think I support the elimination of payment per signature because it sure makes a lot of sense to do it that way.”

While Flynn said the state has not had an extensive history of forgeries by paid signature gatherers, she noted that Maine prosecuted Carol Palesky of Topsham on forgery charges and sentenced her to prison for nine months after problems surfaced in her 1996 tax cap petition drive. Petition gatherers were paid in that campaign.

Gagnon said it might be desirable for the Legislature to require petition circulators to undergo certification or training to curb potential instances of fraud. He also suggested permitting payment to circulators only if the solicited signature proves to be valid.

“That might be better than leaving it as a contract between the circulator and the organizer,” Gagnon said. “It’s interesting to note how much money is used to collect these signatures. There’s always this concept that citizen initiatives are these grass-roots efforts, but they’re clearly highly sophisticated and expensive propositions.”

State Sen. Debra D. Plowman, R-Hampden, argued that in the tribe’s case, incidences of abuse were pointed out by the tribe to the state when the petitions were turned in. She said current laws regulating citizen gatherers were sufficient and that clearly those who abuse those laws are discovered and punished.

“Just because someone breaks a law doesn’t mean that you have to keep trying to find ways for them not to break the law,” she said. “I’m not ready to wiggle around trying to find ways to help them not break the law. They just need to obey it.”

Those who desire to totally eliminate payments to signature gatherers could find themselves running into constitutional issues related to free speech protections, according to House Speaker John Richardson, D-Brunswick.

“If eliminating paid signature gatherers is unconstitutional, I think there are other ways at getting at the issue of fraud or misrepresentation by vigorously enforcing the law and showing others that there’s a price to be paid when and if fraud occurs,” he said.