DENVER-
Drivers across Colorado will be able to tank up with cut-rate gasoline if Gov. Bill Ritter signs a bill making it legal for retailers to sell fuel below cost.
The state Senate gave final approval to the measure Friday, and it would take effect immediately with the governor’s signature.
Ritter has not said whether he would sign it, and his spokesman didn’t immediately return a call.
Chris Howes, a lobbyist for the Colorado Retail Council, said many stores will resume the discounts if Ritter signs.
“We’ll be happy to see it become law, and when that happens, you’ll see many of our members bring back those popular programs,” Howes said.
The Safeway and King Soopers chains had been offering gas discounts of up to 10 cents a gallon to grocery customers but stopped when a judge—ruling in a lawsuit filed by two Montrose gas distributors—said last year that was illegal.
Existing state law barred retailers from selling anything below cost if it hurt competitors or destroyed competition.
The new bill would make the practice illegal only if the company is slashing prices to set up a monopoly.
The Senate had tried to change the bill to bar the discounts in counties with fewer than 200,000 residents. Some senators argued that cut-rate sales by big retailers could run small stations and distributors out of business, leaving no one who would deliver fuel to farms and ranches.
But Attorney General John Suthers and some lawmakers warned that would outlaw many other types of consumer promotions in those same counties, including free cups of coffee for repeat customers and discounted Thanksgiving turkeys.
They also said some counties with fewer than 200,000 people, such as Broomfield north of Denver, would be barred from offering the discounts even though they’re not rural.
The House refused to go along with the Senate change, however, and senators relented on Friday, approving the discounts statewide.
Suthers welcomed the Senate vote and said he hopes Ritter signs the bill.
“I look forward to watching his signature bring a Depression-era statute into the 21st century,” Suthers said in a statement.
Bill opponent Sen. Jim Isgar, D-Hesperus, thinks supermarkets will just make up for their gas discounts by charging more for groceries. But Howes said the gas discounts are a promotion to get more customers to shop for groceries and it didn’t make sense to raise those prices.
“With so much competition in the state it’s just very difficult to jack prices up on groceries without the customer going somewhere else,” he said.
