A district court in Montrose ruled last year that large stores such as Wal-Mart and Safeway cannot offer gas to customers at belowmarket prices. House Bill 1208 would continue to outlaw the practice if the retailers’ intent is to create a monopoly but would permit it as a discount in conjunction with the sale of other products.

      The measure has bipartisan sponsorship and passed the House by a 60-4 margin last month, encountering few obstacles along the way.

      Morse, however, has crafted six amendments that he is planning to offer, including one that would effectively kill the measure and another that would fund a lawyer in the Attorney General’s office specifically to investigate complaints about businesses under-selling gas.

      The Senate began debating the bill Monday while Morse held the role of chair of the Committee as a Whole, overseeing the day’s proceedings.

      After a measure to refer the bill back to a second Senate committee died, Morse asked for debate to be delayed one day, saying he wasn’t “able to prepare myself mentally to run these amendments and be able to have this debate.”

       “It’s monopolistic,” he said later of the bill. “But the trick is: Is the government going to have to undo this monopoly or am I (as a small-business owner) going to have to sue them myself?”

      The Senate sponsor, Republican Steve Johnson of Fort Collins, refuted such claims.

      Forty-one states in which these discount programs are legal have shown no great losses of small gas stations, and the nine that, like Colorado, outlaw them have seen gas prices go up in recent years, he said.

       “There’s a lot of competition in this market already,” Johnson said. “The question is: Should we have the heavy hand of government tell a particular industry that they can’t have a loyalty program?”

CONTACT THE WRITER: (303) 837-0613 or This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it