SALEM — The state Elections Division told a California company that its method of compensating petition carriers for several Oregon initiatives appears to violate the state ban on paying per signature.

The division initially OK’d Arno Political Consultants’ plans for paying signature gatherers, but Elections Director John Lindback sent a letter to the company this week expressing “fresh concerns’’ about those arrangements.

Lindback said it appeared the signature gatherers’ hourly pay and bonuses were directly tied to the number of signatures they collect. That would violate the state law passed by Oregon voters in 2002 to ban the “bounty system’’ of paying by the signature.

In response, Michael Arno, owner of Arno Political Consultants, said Wednesday the company is reviewing its payment methods and will bring them into compliance with Oregon’s law, known as Measure 26.

“If there’s a problem with it, we will err on the side of caution,’’ Arno said in an interview from the company’s office in Rancho Cordova.

Arno’s petition carriers are gathering signatures for various conservative-leaning initiatives, including ones to clamp a new limit on state spending and reimpose term limits on state lawmakers.

Lindback says there needs to be room under Measure 26 to allow companies to provide higher pay and bonuses to productive and dependable workers.

But he said the Elections Division has received complaints about Arno’s payment structure, under which someone who collects 13-16 signatures per hour gets $17 per hour while someone who collects 31-45 signatures gets $43 an hour.

In addition, other Arno workers are paid bonuses of $500 or more if they collect between 500 and 649 signatures per week.

Secretary of State Bill Bradbury issued a statement Wednesday reminding sponsors of all the pending initiative measures about Oregon’s ban on paying by the signature, a law passed in response to instances of fraud and forgery.

“It has come to our attention that some signature gathering firms may be pushing the limits of the law,’’ Bradbury said. “The people of Oregon passed Measure 26 because they didn’t want this type of fraud in the initiative system.’’

July 7 is the deadline for turning in signatures to qualify initiatives for Oregon’s November ballot.