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  Here's background on the Asheville Chamber's separation from the U.S. Chamber: From an interview with Asheville Chamber's CEO Kit Kramer, published in Xpress on 4/19/11 --
  http://mountainx.com/article/1926/A-QA-with-Asheville-Chamber-CEO-Kit-Cramer-full-transcript
  
  Xpress: There's been a lot of controversy recently over the U.S. Chamber of Commerce giving money politically and being partisan politically, among other things, and you've said that you are not going to distance yourself from the U.S. Chamber the way a number of other chambers have, including big cities like New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. Could you speak a little bit to that, and tell me how and why you made that decision?
  
  Kramer: Sure. Actually, I heard from a lot of folks when I first arrived about their feelings -- their strong feelings in opposition to some of the positions the U.S. Chamber has taken -- particularly some of the very rough advertising that occurred during the last Presidential campaign in this area. If you ask the U.S. Chamber, their positions aren't partisan, they're pro-business, but there's a real feeling from many people that they were partisan. So I wanted to ask our board what they felt about this, to make sure that my thinking was aligned with the board's thinking. My initial role was, "Yes, we're a member of the U.S. Chamber, but we're a member of the U.S. Chamber the same way an individual is a member of a political party." Just because the political party takes a position, that doesn't mean that the individual agrees with every aspect of the political party. Nor do we agree with everything that the U.S. Chamber does, and we frequently voice our differences. Policies for the Asheville Chamber are developed by the Asheville Chamber Board without consideration for what the U.S. Chamber is doing. We use the U.S. Chamber as a source of information and research for when we're facing a particular issue or if we want to follow some particular legislation it's helpful for us to have that. Could we live without that membership? Yes. We probably could, but it does make the job easier for our public policy staff.
  
  So I went to the board at our last retreat [in March], and asked them how they felt about this situation, and told them I wanted a vote on whether or not they wanted to retain membership. We had a lengthy discussion, and there are pros and cons, and there are people who, while they are supportive of retaining the membership in the U.S. Chamber, are very uncomfortable with the tenor of the discussion and the tenor of the ads that were appearing. We had people who were uncomfortable enough that they didn't want to be affiliated, and we had people who said it's not about their political views. It's more about the research. We need that information. It's helpful to us in helping our members. So everybody was all over the board. So they asked when our dues were up, and found out that it's the end of October. The board feels we should be a values-driven organization. They want us to do some work at defining those values, and making sure that we're cemented behind them, and then we want to come back and revisit the membership and see what the correlation might be. And then they'll make a decision before we have to renew those dues or not renew those dues in October.
  
  By Jeff Fobes
  10/28/2011

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  I advocated for the local chamber to leave the U.S. Chamber during my City Council campaign, and am on record suggesting that the City of Asheville should withdraw all support for the local chamber as long as they were associated with the hyper-political, hyper-mega-corporate U.S. Chamber.
  
  I'm very gratified that the local made this move, assuring local businesses that they are the focus of efforts here ... not support for a distorted national agenda that surely does not reflect the viewpoint or the needs of many local businesses.
  By cecilbothwell
  10/28/2011

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