Some Coloradans will be feeling some unnecessary gas pains at the pump if an ill-advised maneuver by the state Senate is allowed to become law.
A bill that would have allowed retailers and grocery stores across the state to again sell gasoline below cost was amended on Wednesday to exclude counties with fewer than 200,000 people. The 20 senators who approved the amendment feared such promotions would put small rural merchants out of business. We can all be sympathetic, but that notion ignores the fact that some of the 55 counties affected aren’t rural at all – Pueblo and Broomfield, to name a couple. And the worrying over mom and pop stores is a bit late. Wal-Mart long ago built its empire by erecting big-boxes in rural areas, ignoring the harm to the smaller competitors.
On top of all that, the amendment, apparently pushed by the Independent Petroleum Distributors, would make it illegal to sell anything below cost in those 55 counties. That could mean no more marked-down crullers in Grand Junction, or furniture liquidation sales in Pueblo.
The original legislation was needed to modernize the 1937 Unfair Practices Act. The outdated law caught the public’s notice last fall when a Montrose jury decided that King Soopers and City Market had violated it by using below-cost gas prices to lure customers. That lawsuit also kept Wal-Mart from bringing its deeply discounted $4 prescription drugs to Colorado.
“We wanted to instill anti-trust principles” instead, said Attorney General John Suthers, a proponent of the original bill. That means retailers and others would be forbidden from selling items below cost only if their intent was to monopolize a market. Anti-trust laws are “not there to protect certain types of competitors,” Suthers said, but “to protect competition.”
Sen. Steve Johnson, R-Fort Collins, who co-sponsored House Bill 1208 with Democrat Rep. Cheri Jahn, said he hopes the Senate’s amendment will be rejected when it returns to the House. The unaltered bill passed there 60-4.
“It surprised me the length that people will go to keep people in rural areas from getting lower prices,” Johnson said.
We urge the House to reject the Senate amendment. The bipartisan bill should then go to a conference committee where a reasonable compromise can be reached.
We think all Coloradans should be able to fill their gas tanks with cheaper gasoline – and even buy a bag of half-price donuts if that’s what they want.
