Maine Watch with Jennifer Rooks looks at the Census and what the 2010 count might mean for the people of Maine. Also, Jennifer speaks with Democratic Gubernatorial candidate Steve Rowe.

Maine's Indian tribes are making their third bid for a casino in less than a decade. Passamaquoddy Gov. William Nicholas says that his tribe and the Penobscot Nation want to ask voters in November to approve an Indian casino in Calais. The tribes would be competing with a group of investors called Black Bear Entertainment that is planning to have a question on the November ballot, asking voters to green light a casino for Oxford County.

A bill that would impose new standards governing the citizen's initiative and people's veto ballot process was killed today by a legislative policy committee. Democratic House Majority Whip Seth Berry, of Bowdoinham, says his bill was an attempt to bring greater accountability and transparency to the process of bringing issues to ballot, but Republican opponents saw the proposal as an attempt to complicate and discourage signature-gathering efforts.

Partisan flare-ups erupted Monday during a work session on bills sponsored by two prominent Democratic legislators who say that citizen initiatives and people's vetoes are vulnerable to fraud and manipulation. Republican opponents of both bills see the legislation as a way to hamstring citizens who want exercise their right to influence government policies at the ballot box.

This week supporters of a proposed casino resort in Oxford County learned that their citizen initiative has qualified for the statewide ballot in November. At the same time, just about 20 miles away, investors in a casino facility in Lewiston got the green light for a city-wide vote in June on whether the site a former mill building should be re-developed to house the project, assuming that its approved by voters statewide next year. But the proximity of the two proposed casinos may raise problems for each.

Critics of the state's citizen's initiative ballot process are calling for big changes in the law, including one that would allow voters to retract their signatures from petitions if they felt they were misled when they signed the documents. Other proposed revisions before a legislative policy committee would require initiative proponents to state the costs of their proposal to voters and explain how it would be funded if adopted. Critics counter the changes are a direct assault on the citizen initiative process.