Rental-Shmental

Admittedly, Seattlest is a bit late on this one, but hey, we gotta pay the bills too so please, forgive us for being a couple of days behind the news cycle on the Flexcar story.

To us, the state's decision to force Flexcar users to pay a car-rental tax stinks from here to Olympia.

First and foremost, the whole point of Flexcar is to make it easier for a household like ours - stuck in the nether reaches of Seattle where single-family homes with multiple cars in the driveways is de rigueur - to own only one car. It's a goal something that the city, the county and even the state have said they want to do.

Second, while using Flexcar isn't exactly cheap, it's not really supposed to be in order to encourage people to use other forms of transport except when a car is absolutely necessary. But it does make it affordable to drive when we need to (like when an appointment demands that we not arrive sweaty from a bike ride or is too close to another commitment that the buses just won't do). Thanks to this new tax though, Seattlest is going to have to pay almost $2 an hour more to use a Flexcar on those occasions. Now, $2 doesn't sound like a lot, but over 10 hours a month, that's 20 bucks. We will be the first to tell you that a two-person household made up of a full-time student and a freelance writer ain't exactly rollin' in it.

It’s also worth mentioning that in our other life, Seattlest is a bit wonky and knows how to look things up in the Revised Code of Washington (sorry ladies, we're taken) and according to our research, Flexcar doesn’t seem to be a car rental company so taxing it like one is patently unfair. See, by law, a rental car company, rents cars "to the public." Now, we're not lawyers, but Flexcar requires membership (like a credit union) so just any Tom, Dick or Harry can not use one of their cars. It's the law people.

Finally, we certainly can't forget to mention that if this decision stands, once again Portland will be better than us because they've already exempted Flexcar from a similar tax.

If you ask us (and we know you've been waiting since last week for Seattlest to weigh in on this) Gov. Gregoire should be doing a lot more than sending a sternly worded letter to the Department of Revenue in order to fix this situation. Elections are looming after all and if it wasn't for Seattle, she wouldn't be doing much of anything right now.

If you'd like to do something, at least sign the petition.