Chamber Fires Its President : Business: Brooke Knapp helped retain commercial rights to two landmarks. But critics say she failed as a manager.

The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce has fired its president, Brooke Knapp, after a troubled year that saw her resign in April only to return to office following an emotional appeal to the board of directors.

In disclosing the firing last week, board Chairman Chris P. Baumgart credited Knapp with helping the chamber resolve a potentially disastrous struggle with the state attorney general’s office over commercial rights to the Hollywood sign and the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

But he said Knapp, a noted aviator, had failed as a manager.

“That matter was resolved a few months ago in a win-win fashion for the chamber, the attorney general and the people of Los Angeles,” he said. “And now that issue is behind us and it’s time to run a Chamber of Commerce here in Hollywood.”

Knapp declined to comment, but some members of the board said she was ousted to provide a scapegoat for what they see as serious mismanagement of the organization by a small group of insiders.

The chamber, which also controls the television rights to the Hollywood Christmas parade, has seen the ouster of half a dozen key executives in the last two years and the replacement of several board members who differed with the leadership.

“Her lack of ability didn’t surface in the last three weeks,” said chamber board member Maxine Weinman, owner of a restaurant on Santa Monica Boulevard. “It was visible for a long time, but it was only right now that everybody decided they had enough. Her resignation should have been accepted when she submitted it.”

Knapp’s motives for leaving and coming back in April were unclear. She said at the time that she was hired to chart a new course for the chamber and that her job was done, but a few days later, she asked for the job back. In agreeing, Baumgart said, the board imposed performance standards that were used in the review that led to her termination.

The decision to fire Knapp was taken by a vote of more than half the members of the 45-member board, Baumgart said.

But several directors who asked not to be identified said Knapp was told of her ouster in a private meeting several hours before the board met at 4 p.m. Monday.

Don Tillman, a former chairman of the organization, will serve as interim president of the chamber--the third-largest in the country--until a replacement for Knapp is found, Baumgart said.

It was in March that the state quietly settled its lawsuit against the Hollywood chamber, allowing the group to keep control of the Hollywood sign and the Walk of Fame despite accusations of financial mismanagement.

State investigators said as much as $700,000 had been taken improperly from a pair of trusts set up to pay for maintenance of the two landmarks and used to help the financially strapped chamber meet its bills.

Under the settlement, the chamber agreed to repay $224,464 over the next 10 years and to allow the City of Los Angeles to appoint its own representatives to the boards that supervise the trusts.