Tucked away in the Saturday Oregonian was the story of the departure of Franklin "Kim" Kimbrough after a three-year stint as the director of the Portland Business Alliance, this town's equivalent of a chamber of commerce.

Kimbrough was a tough talker and a demanding boss who decided to throw his weight around downtown. He was going to snooker the city into putting up an ice skating rink in Pioneer Courthouse Square, and he was going to bully the city into being more business-friendly by constantly badmouthing the City Council for being anti-business.

The council responded by stripping Kimbrough's group of the lucrative municipal downtown parking operation, and wondering aloud why the taxpayers were getting such negative pronouncements from a group that was being paid by the city to promote Portland as a place to do business. So alienated was much of the public that an anti-alliance blog even sprang up.

From within the circle of wagons today we hear that the departure was for personal reasons, and that the city's business leaders still supported the great job Kimbrough was doing. I don't believe a word of it.

Vera and Erik did the right thing by pushing this guy back to the Midwest, where he came from. "We are not looking for uncritical endorsement of every city decision," The O quoted the mayor as saying, "but we need an alliance that is actively engaged with the city in a positive way, full of ideas and credible solutions." Amen to that.