You can’t live through an election season without hearing a candidate or two prattling on about how they intend to take on the "special interests" and return the government to the people. What about when the politicians and the government are the special interest? That’s the predicament that this state, and those elected to decide its policy, find themselves in because of the odd duck that is th North Carolina Railroad Co. The state’s oldest corporation, NCRR was created by the state in 1848 but partially owned by private stockholders. In 199, the state decided to buy them out, becoming sole owner of the 317-mile rail corridor from Morehead City to Charlotte.

Of course, there’s nothing really strange about government ownership of transportation infrastructure. But unlike roads or ferries, the railroad operates as a private business. It’s organized as a corporate real-estate investment trust. Its earnings, from leasing use of the tracks to Norfolk Southern Corp., are poured back into railway improvements and operations, not the state’s General Fund or primary transportation funds. State law also gives NCRR the same powers as private railroads. One of those: Railroads can’t lose property or easement rights to squatters. There is some government control of the company, but it’s exercised from afar. The governor and legislative leadership appoint the 13-member board of directors.

In an age of interstate highways and air travel, railroad companies today hardly flex the political muscle of their 19th century predecessors or provoke the same ill will from the public. For most railraods, it’s easy enough to keep their heads down, go about their business and assume that all that bile spewing forth about special interests is aimed at some oil or drug company. But lately, the NCRR is arousing the kind of animosity that was once reserved for robber barons.

The railroad, using the latest satellite-mapping technology, has been trying to enforce its right of way, claiming hundreds of businesses have encroached on the 200-foot-wide ribbon it controls. So far, the NCRR is not asking that businesses move. It is demanding that they pay rent – in some cases $1200 a year – and carry liability insurance. More than 200 businesses have signed leases. But the move has plenty of owners, many with deeds and property-tax bills showing ownership going back decades, hopping mad. Some have refused. Others are demanding lawmakers rein in this state-owned entity.

State Rep. Jeff Barnhart, a Cabbarus County Republican, sees the railroad’s acion as a money grab aimed at small businesses that can least afford it. Barnhart wants a legislative study committee to look at the dispute. "I’ve supported the railroad, but there’s right and wrong. This is just wrong," he says. But to find the culprit, he may need to look at himself and fellow legislators. In 2000, they gave the railroad power to lease right of way "for the purpose of preserving and protecting its railroad corridor and franchise," which is what NCRR President Scott Saylor says it’s doing. Most legislators probably had no idea what they had unleashed. Helping a state-owned railroad is one thing. Infuriating business-owning constituents – who vote, go to church with people who vote and otherwise socialize with people who vote – is something else.

Railraod officials feel confident that the law is on their side. But it’s not clear how well the law, and the circumstances under which it was passed, will hold up to intense scrutiny. The charter that established the right of way 159 years ago essentially voided any other land grants that might apply. Most – but not all – of the track ran through wilderness. Who knows under what circumstances some of the property was gained?

Even today, most of its right of way isn’t owned outright by the railroad. In 1995, in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing, then-NCRR President John McNair III wrote that the railraod controlled at least 80% of it by easement. Despite its charter, he claimed the right of way varied from 50 to 200 feet. "If Railroad operations terminate, the owners of the land may seek to have the easements terminated," he wrote. For this, people are being asked to pay?

But the dispute raises a more fundamental question: How does the North Carolina Railroad, as a state-owned entity, benefit the taxpayers, the people who own it? Would the benefits be any different if it were privately owned? For a few hundred of those owners, the question has been turned on its head. To them, the railroad – state-owned or not – has become just another special interest aligned against their interests.

Scott Mooneyham is the editor of The Insider, http://www.ncinsider.com.

Despite her father’s misgivings, Pat Sullivan figured she would be a Latin teacher. “He wanted me to be an engineer, like him.” A favorite high-school teacher intervened, pointing out the limited opportunities for making a living in a dead language and suggested biology instead. That lesson shaped Sullivan in ways she couldn’t have imagined. Four decades later, as chancellor of UNC Greensboro, she’s in a position to mold the career choices of students, and making their education relevant to the modern economy has been a touchstone of her 13-year tenure.

The longest-serving chancellor in the UNC system, she has beefed up the sciences at UNCG — she hopes to push it into the top tier of research campuses, alongside Carolina and N.C. State — and boosted Gateway University Research Park, its joint venture with N.C. A&T. “I feel a professional and personal obligation to play a role in this area’s economic revitalization. We’ve been hit very hard with factory closures. As the biggest university here, we’ve had to be more of a driver.”

The native New yorker says this in the low-key way that has become her trademark. Sullivan, 67, eschews CEO peacockery for a researcher’s curiosity. Where many bosses expound, she explores. “I look at the university as a very large, complex organism,” she says. At the cellular level, it may mutate, moving, say, to more online courses, but core principles are encoded in its DNA: free speech, unfettered inquiry and wide consultation. Professors don’t take well to bossing. “You’ve got to persuade them, acknowledging their expertise. You’ve got to consult.”

If science shaped her mind, it didn’t satisfy her ambition. as a young faculty member, she worried about the relevance of her research. “At end of months in the lab, you’d wonder if you were making a difference. In my work with students, I knew I was making a difference.”

So, as administrative opportunities arose, she jumped. “I found them very challenging, not so much intellectually but personally and psychologically. You might put something in motion today, and nothing would happen for three years. You get your satisfaction from seeing the success of others and the success of the institution.”

For a quarter-century, each July University of Florida Foundation officials have packed up orange and blue banners, balloons, Gator cups and other UF paraphernalia and driven eight hours to throw a party at the favorite summer getaway spot of some of the university’s most generous donors: western North Carolina.

So many Floridians now sojourn in the region that UF officials have had to split the bash into two parties over two nights. To treat the Carolina crowd to an evening of “bluegrass, barbecue and Bernie,” President Bernie Machen has to spend one night in Highlands and the next in Linville. “It’s grown so much, we’ve really maxed out the seating,” says Carter Boydstun, senior associate vice president for development at the UF Foundation. “Every summer, we have a lot more names to add to the invitation list.”

Whether chased by the heat, the hurricanes or property-tax and insurance costs, more Floridians are buying second homes in western North Carolina — or packing permanently for the mountains. And Florida home builders are following their customers north. Seeking to diversify as they ride out Florida’s housing downturn, the builders are buying up mountaintops and developing them by the thousands of acres. But they are betting on an uncertain boom. For in these cloud-laced mountains, Florida history is repeating itself in a dozen different ways. In some areas, speculators have lost money on deals that proved too good to be true. In others, rising land values and taxes are leading locals to sell out and move on, homogenizing the mountain culture as Christmas-tree crops become rooftops. Across the region, lack of development regulation has led to environmental problems, from groundwater scarcity to soil erosion.

“People move to western North Carolina communities because they think these small towns are so quaint, and then they perch a 5,000-square-foot house on the side of the mountain,” says Robin Cape, an Asheville City Council member exposed to western North Carolina on summer trips from Tampa with her grandparents. “I wish people could remember that they’re not in Miami anymore.”

Florida’s connection to the mountains of North Carolina dates to the late 19th century. University of South Florida historian Gary Mormino says those who could afford it began to leave coastal Florida each summer to escape annual scourges of deadly yellow fever. During south Florida’s real-estate boom in the 1920s, the Asheville chamber hired director Fred Weede away from the Miami chamber, “a clear statement that Asheville wanted what was happening in Miami,” says Western Carolina University history professor Richard D. Starnes, author of Creating the Land of the Sky: Tourism and Society in Western North Carolina. Boom towns like Palm Beach and Miami had proven that transportation — rail or road — was key to landing tourists and second-home buyers. Weede was among those who persuaded federal officials to route the Blue Ridge Parkway through North Carolina, excluding rival mountain destinations in Tennessee.

Throughout the 20th century, Asheville’s real-estate fortunes were tied closely to Florida’s. “You see many of the same people operating under different business names in both markets, and the same speculators speculating in both markets,” Starnes says. In the 1930s, “when the Florida market crashed, the Asheville market followed.” Starnes, North Carolina real-estate agents and others say they see a similar symbiosis today. “We can pretty much connect the dots,” says Tom Tveidt, director of research with the Asheville Area Chamber of Commerce, who tracks migration data for Buncombe, Madison, Haywood and Henderson counties. Tveidt’s research shows Florida is the top feeder state by far.

Southwest of Asheville in the rugged but upscale town of Cashiers, Realtor Jane Ebberts shows up for an interview looking ready for fly-fishing: jeans, hiking boots and a backcountry blouse. Originally from Buffalo, N.Y., she and her husband raised a family and pursued careers in central Florida, where she was a software designer. They came here in 1997, when he sold his security firm to a national company and retired early. “We really wanted to get back to all four seasons, but not Buffalo’s four seasons.” A friend recommended Cashiers. They came in May and didn’t want to return home, even long enough to sell their house. “It was love at first sight. It’s beautiful weather and a lifestyle, and you’re not going to get attacked by mosquitoes, either.”

The Ebbertses fall into a large demographic group known as halfbacks — retirees or others who come to Florida from the Northeast or Midwest, then move halfway back home, whether to North Carolina or another midlatitude state. Many halfbacks fall for the mountain weather: Average temperatures are 15 degrees cooler than Florida’s in the summer, with Crayola-bright autumns, light-snow winters and rhododendron-blooming springs.

More Floridians keep second homes in North Carolina than move here full time — in some cases to avoid state income tax. But the ranks of those like the Ebbertses who move permanently are growing. The annual number of Floridians switching to North Carolina residency rose from 13,578 in 1990 to 26,653 last year. While Census data doesn’t reflect a major exodus, moving companies are beginning to pick up a trend. In January, United Van Lines reported that for the first time since it began keeping records in 1977 it moved more people out of Florida than into the state. The company’s annual migration survey found North Carolina was the No. 1 destination state nationally, with a 64% inbound migration rate in 2006. Florida’s rate was 51.2% outbound, 48.8% inbound — a statistical wash.

So many Florida home builders are following customers north these days that they report running into each other on the ridges. Ebberts represents projects by Steven Umansky of Tampa’s LandSource Development, Ian Gail of Sheridan & Gail in Fort Lauderdale, Herb Gimelstob of Boca Raton and Mountain View Ventures, part of Resources Planning of West Palm Beach. Northeast of Asheville in Linville, Naples-based Lutgert Cos. began developing Linville Ridge near Boone more than 20 years ago; more than 70% of the residents are from south Florida. Other southwest Florida developers, including the Bonita Bay Group in Bonita Springs and Stock Development in Naples, say they are scouting development possibilities in North Carolina but cannot go forward until real-estate fortunes in Florida improve.

While all the Florida cash is a boon to mountain economies, it has created tension. Just as Floridians rely on European visitors even as they ridicule their Speedos, North Carolina’s mountain communities have long counted on Florida summer-tourist dollars while simultaneously deriding “Floridiots” who drive 25 mph on mountain roads where the posted speed limit is 40. In recent years, the concerns have become more serious than pokey drivers. Dominated by early-retiree baby boomers, the newcomers are bidding up land and housing costs, even as wages and job growth increase only slightly, says Tveidt at the Asheville chamber. As a result, just as in many resort areas of Florida, workers in communities such as Cashiers and Highlands that cater to the newcomers often can’t afford to buy homes there. Other familiar themes: sprawl, traffic gridlock, air pollution and loss of prime pasture and forestland caused by rapid, poorly planned growth.

In the most-rural mountain counties, conflicts are arising as developers import new, unfamiliar types of development, says Jody Higgins, a native of Yancey County. Higgins, publisher of the Yancey County Journal, says Floridians are an established part of the culture in such places as Pensacola township, where they have mingled with mountain natives since the 1920s, dwelling in modest cabins with spectacular views of Mount Mitchell and the Black Mountains. Several new communities, however, feature much larger homes and gated entrances — once unheard of in Yancey, a quiet, conservative county that continues to ban the sale of liquor, beer and wine. “Why would you want to live behind a gate in the mountains?” asks Cape, the Asheville City Council member. “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

When it comes to importing Sunshine State grandiosity, no Florida developer is doing it bigger than Celebration-based Ginn Resorts. Ginn’s 6,000-acre Laurelmor, a luxury golf community that covers parts of Watauga and Wilkes counties, is larger than the nearby towns of Boone and Blowing Rock combined. With hoopla reminiscent of Florida land companies circa the 1950s, Ginn threw an opening party last November and flew potential buyers — many from Florida — over the property in helicopters. Buyers were impressed, snapping up 240 lots, ranging from $450,000 to $1.2 million, that day. But residents worry that the development will drive up home prices in their communities, which are increasingly unaffordable for families. Environmentalists fear Laurelmor will aggravate water-supply problems.

To ease environmental concerns, Ginn has agreed to put at least 2,000 acres, including 63 miles of streams, in a conservation easement. Other Florida developers also are setting aside land as part of community amenities. However, too many don’t, says Jose Rosado of Coral Gables, developer of Great Camps of the Smokies in Graham County. Rosado is CEO of IBEX Mountain Group, which has purchased more than 1,000 acres of wilderness bordering Nantahala National Forest and Great Smoky Mountain National Park and plans to build four communities with hundreds of high-end, rustic homes. Rosado has pledged 70% of each community will be preserved as wilderness commons areas. “A lot of Florida developers have been doing some real high-quality stuff, but there’s a few that have come in and done it wrong,” he says, for example, taking “checkerboard” plans and plunking them down in the mountains.

Rosado says Florida developers “by and large don’t have experience with steep terrain” and encounter problems with erosion and drainage. Most local governments lack laws, such as “steep-slope” ordinances, designed to avoid such problems. Some counties have no planning or zoning laws whatsoever. Fort Myers luxury-home builder Bill Ennen tells of walking into the Yancey County Courthouse, asking directions to the zoning office and getting a puzzled look. There is no zoning office. “People have been very opposed to any sort of subdivision ordinances here because property rights are sacred,” says Higgins, the Yancey newspaper owner. “But now people are suddenly seeing the mountains being chopped all to pieces, and there’s finally a groundswell to do something.”

Residents were debating growth and development issues in counties all across the Appalachians this summer. In a scenario familiar in Florida, newcomers often were the ones spurring on the local governments to act. Having found a slice of natural beauty and slow pace of life, the most recent batch of immigrants is trying to keep the next batch from lousing it up. Jackson County, home to Cashiers, took the boldest step when it slapped a moratorium on all new development pending a tough new subdivision ordinance, which passed in August. The high-end Florida developers supported the new law. “I don’t think anyone wants to see the mountains chopped up,” says Tampa’s Umansky.

Mitchell County has begun to discuss a subdivision ordinance — but only after a real-estate scheme at a development called the Village of Penland scammed investors out of more than $100 million. Developers, including one from Bradenton, Fla., used inflated appraisals and phony second mortgages as down payments and persuaded investors to borrow millions, promising enormous profits. The developers failed to finish a single home on the 1,200-acre project, using the money on other failed projects in South Carolina and St. Thomas, according to Attorney General Roy Cooper.

Having experienced a seedy side to the housing boom, western North Carolina is beginning to see a downside. Counties that had bucked the national housing downturn noticed a slowdown this summer that in some cases was tied directly to Florida’s. Every real-estate broker seems to have stories of buyers who couldn’t close on the purchase of a mountain home because they couldn’t sell a home in Florida. At Century 21 All Seasons in Asheville, broker-in-charge Joe Grady advises sellers not to make deals contingent upon a sale in Florida. He’s even advising his brokers not to bother with customers who have to sell their homes there: “Do not get them in your car; do not play chauffeur; do not give them the tour,” he says. “In our experience, it is taking them a long, long time to sell.”

Just ask Daniel Longen, 64, and fiancée Susan Brady, 60. Last year, with their Naples home on the market, they bought one in the western Asheville suburbs, looking forward to four seasons. When their Naples place languished on the market, the couple decided to put the Asheville home up for sale, too, and to live in whichever one didn’t sell. Two weeks later, they headed back to Naples. “I’m disappointed, but not terribly because Naples isn’t that bad, and people really seem to be working on the things we were critical of, like homeowners insurance and taxes,” Longen says. “But those mountain vistas sure were nice.”

Blink and you’ll miss it. In the vast Triangle suburbia, along a parkway featuring strip malls and sprawling apartment complexes, sits La Farm Bakery. Flanked by a Papa John’s Pizza and a Caribou Coffee, La Farm oozes European charm in Cary. French music plays on a loop, 18th century wooden beams crisscross the ceiling, and head baker Lionel Vatinet, 41, calls out to people in a (real) French accent. Customers hear about the centuries-old traditions that go into the food. Images are evoked of simple village life, where breads were baked with local ingredients in communal ovens.

Beneath this Old World simplicity lies a modern business acumen. Not a local? Order online. Want to know more about Lionel? Read his blog. Seeing expansion possibilities? Talk to co-owner Missy Vatinet, who created a software program and training manuals to recreate the shop in any storefront in America. There’s nothing simple about La Farm or its success.

What opened as a two-person operation in 1999 has 27 employees. Sales have gone from $496,000 the first year to more than $1 million in 2006. The Vatinets, a husband-and-wife team, project revenue exceeding $1.25 million this year, 12% of which will come from off-site sales. In May, Whole Foods Market added La Farm breads to its Triangle stores, and restaurants such as Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse and Biaggi’s serve La Farm products. Internet sales were introduced after a mention on The Rachael Ray Show in March. An item in O, The Oprah Magazine, will tout its gift sampler.

“Just as there are recipes for food, there are recipes for business,” Missy, 38, says. “We wanted to create a system that would allow these artisans to do what they do best, profitably.” Their recipe for success has made them Business North Carolina’s Small Business of the Year. Judging this year’s competition were Ira Weiss, dean of N.C. State University’s College of Management; Kevin Schoolcraft, whose Matthews-based Masterpiece Staircase and Millwork Inc. won last year; and Ben Kinney, BNC’s publisher. All cited quality as a major component in the their decision. “A real story about returning to roots,” Weiss wrote in his remarks. “High-touch quality production of food in a time of mass production.”

La Farm carries handmade bread, pastries, tarts and sandwiches, all made daily on the premises. The staple is the bread, which comes in 35 varieties, including Asiago parmesan cheese and walnut sage. Everything is preservative-free, and local and organic ingredients are used whenever possible. The business is the perfect match of the Vatinets’ talents, he a formidable baker, she a veteran of the retail-food and restaurant industry. Their conversation about La Farm is as likely to include the terms brand platform and service infrastructure as pain au chocolate or yeast starter. They are hands-on with their business, a round-the-clock operation in which bakers begin preparing breads at midnight and the last sales clerk doesn’t leave until after 5 p.m. Lionel (pronounced LEE-onel) can often be found chatting with customers, encouraging them to taste different varieties and bringing them back to the baking area to show how it’s done.

La Farm has its origins in the neighborhood bakeries Lionel grew up with in France. A native of Paris, he got his first taste (pun intended) of the baker’s life as a teenager, when his best friend began dating a baker’s daughter. The three would hang out at the bakery sampling bread fresh from the oven, and Lionel began to imagine himself in the industry. He enjoyed the casual conversations between baker and customer, as well as the art and craft involved in shaping and baking bread. His parents, who ran a grocery store in the Port d’Orleans section, were eager for their son to learn a trade and arranged for him to spend the day as a baker’s apprentice. He loved it, and when he left school at 16 — common for teens pursuing vocational training in France — he was accepted into another apprenticeship to learn baking from the country’s masters.

He spent seven years breathing, sleeping and, yes, eating bread. He traveled the country and learned everything from how to shape dough to what bread’s molecular structure looks like. “A few years in, my mentor told me I was born to be a baker. I fell in love with the mystery of yeast and rising bread.” He graduated as a maitre boulanger (master baker) and a member of Les Compagnons du Devoir (The Companions of the Duty), a French guild that encompasses a variety of artisan and trade organizations and dates to the 12th century.

Vatinet took his expertise abroad, working as a consultant for restaurants and bakeries in England and Canada, as well as the U.S., Caribbean and Middle East. He eventually moved to America, training bakers and designing breads for businesses such as Panera, La Brea, Acme and Zabar’s. In 1994, he helped start the San Francisco Baking Institute, teaching artisan bread making. It became clear that not only was there a demand for gourmet breads but that it was growing. His perceptions weren’t wrong; Census Bureau figures show that sales of artisan breads increased steadily during the 1990s, part of a larger trend that saw Americans developing a taste for specialty foods. A growing economy and an increase in travel abroad were the main reasons, according to the Mintel Group, a London-based market researcher.

Lionel’s dream of opening a French-style bakery in America was starting to look like a decent business venture. Around this time, he met Missy Eide at a trade show in Chicago. A native of Syracuse, N.Y., she had grown up in Roanoke, Va., and had graduated with a degree in hotel and restaurant management from Virginia Tech. She began her career working for Austin, Texas-based Fresh Fields in 1992, opening branches in cities such as Richmond, Va., Charlotte and Washington, D.C. She went on to work for Brinker International — led by restaurateur Phil Romano — in Dallas, where she was part of a team that launched Eatzi’s, a chain of gourmet takeout shops. After three years at Brinker, she joined the Richmond-based Restaurant Co. and worked for Dick Ripp, whom she considers her ultimate mentor.

By the time she met Lionel in 1997, she had decided she wanted to start her own business. She quit her job, then took three months off to travel in South America. When she returned, Lionel suggested they open a business together. Missy wasn’t keen on the idea. She knew that partnerships have greater failure rates than individually run businesses and that personal partnerships do even worse. But his enthusiasm grew infectious. “I thought, if we could do the bakery business, we could definitely beat the odds for marriage,” she says. (They wed in 2005; by then, the business was a success.)

They traveled the U.S., Canada and France, studying successful bakeries and food retailers. They looked at the best markets, which seemed to be major cities such as New York, San Francisco and Boston. But it was when they researched up-and-coming ones that they found La Farm’s home. Seeing that real estate was doing so well in the Carolinas and Virginia, they ordered a $12.95 demographic study of the Triangle — where she had relatives — and found that the Raleigh suburbs had the right mix: middle-class, educated and well-traveled. The couple felt out “pocket markets,” spending time in neighborhoods. They chose a storefront in a shopping center along the not-then-finished Cary Parkway, banking on the idea that the road would guarantee lots of traffic past their place.

Setting up the shop became a family affair. Her father, a general contractor, came from Virginia to help with renovations. They were crucial to what Lionel calls the “theater” aspect of the business. He wanted customers to see the bakers at work and to be able to speak to them, just as he had at the bakery that inspired him. So they left the storefront open, with no wall separating the production and retail areas. Lionel’s parents flew in from Paris, and every morning his dad would help with the baking. Missy’s aunt and uncle, who live in Raleigh, also helped with the setup. They all took turns getting the word out by standing at the intersection in front of the shop, passing out samples to motorists.

The bakery opened in October 1999 with a simple menu: eight varieties of bread, including their signature sourdough, cinnamon buns, cookies and coffee. When the doors opened at 7 a.m. the first day of business, a line was waiting. In 31/2 hours, they were out of bread, and Lionel rushed to bake more. Using the only ingredients in stock, he created an Italian cornmeal loaf that customers still request.

Though the shop was popular, the timing was unfortunate. Soon after it opened, the tech bubble burst, and many customers began facing one, if not two, layoffs per household. One Mother’s Day, a man tried sheepishly to return a fruit tart he had bought for his wife, who had chided him for spending money for something they didn’t need. A clerk refunded the money but told him to keep the tart. A few months later, once again employed, he came back and paid up. Then the Atkins Diet came into its heyday, and some customers began cutting out bread. This trend reversed with the South Beach Diet, as its creator encouraged eating “healthy” carbs such as whole grains. The Vatinets introduced varieties such as nine-grain, spelt and whole wheat. By another quirk of timing, they found themselves trying to grow their business in the midst of anti-Gallic sentiment due to France’s position on the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. But they can recall only one incident: A customer told Missy he didn’t like the French and was glad La Farm sold Italian bread. He bought five loaves. They weren’t Italian, but she didn’t correct him.

The Vatinets expanded their offerings, packaging mixes for items such as hot chocolate and crepes and began selling locally made jams and preserves. They increased the number of breads they sold but hewed to a formula Missy had laid out based on her experience in retail food. Knowing 80% of sales come from 20% of products, they came up with a core list of breads to be made every day and supplemented it with breads baked several times a week and seasonal treats. They continued to add staff, including an apprentice from Lionel’s guild in France. La Farm attracted many workers for whom English was a second language, so she created manuals with photos showing each step of a recipe or interaction with a customer. Copies — dusted in flour — can be found throughout the production area.

She also began taking steps to expand, creating a program to cost out recipes, giving potential franchisees a clearer picture of expenses. They looked at a second location a few years after the bakery opened, then decided to concentrate on one store. They did begin selling their bread at farmers markets, though this presents a challenge: Because La Farm can’t be classified as an agricultural operation, it isn’t guaranteed a stall. Markets in Carrboro and Greensboro won’t allow it to set up shop. At the state market in Raleigh, it is allowed to sell only if a stall is left after the farmers have their pick.

But loyal customers have rallied to the bakery’s aid. As the business grew, the couple was conscious of the need for a long-term strategy. Bill Weiss, CEO of the Cary-based Promar Group consultancy, went over their goals and how to reach them. One of his employees then helped develop a brand platform. Gordon Munro helped them set up a Web site. A photographer who splits his time between New York City and Raleigh, he didn’t charge for marketing photos and helped them find a graphic designer to redo their packaging. Consultant Rick Moore was so pleased to hear about their contract with Whole Foods that he delivers the loaves each morning in his car.

The Vatinets are focusing on growing LaFarm’s Internet business, in which customers are sent a slightly less-baked loaf wrapped in parchment with instructions on how to crisp it. The Vatinets hope to open a Raleigh store by early next year. They’re also working with a public-relations consultant, sending products and marketing materials to magazines and TV programs to get noticed, a tactic that secured them the mention on Rachael Ray — their cookies were featured as “Snack of the Day” — and in O‘s February issue, in which their La Farm Sampler will be featured as an ideal gift.

A PR specialist? Graphic designers and brand platforms? All this for a bakery? It’s becoming standard, according to Michael Kalupa, president of McLean, Va.-based Retail Bakers of America. “The days of the old-fashioned, white-paint bakery are gone. These days, it’s about color and merchandising, about grab and go, about whether the coffee is up to standard. They’ve really adjusted to the market.”

It’s not the way the cookie usually crumbles, but Rusine Mitchell-Sinclair, 55, stepped down as IBM’s top Tar Heel executive — the first woman in that post — to be CEO of Girl Scouts – North Carolina Coastal Pines, created by merging two councils covering 41 counties in the eastern half of the state. A 26-year Big Blue veteran, she was VP of strategy and implementation of IBM Global Services. The Raleigh resident now runs a bigger operation: IBM employs 13,000 in the state; the council has more than 32,000 girls and nearly 10,000 adult members.

While growing up in Statesboro, Ga., Tom DeLoach Jr. never saw a NASCAR race. He didn’t go to his first until 1986 as vice president of marketing for oil giant Mobil. “I said, ‘Wow, this is neat!’ Boom! The light came on: ‘I like this!’” Eventually, he became the company’s go-to guy for motor sports. Nobody got a sponsorship without his signature. When Mobil merged with Exxon in December 1999, he decided to take a lucrative payout and retire. “I couldn’t stand it. It lasted about two weeks.”

He bought a piece of Roger Penske’s NASCAR team, but when driver Jeremy Mayfield bolted for Evernham Motorsports soon after, Penske bought back his interest. DeLoach wanted to stay in racing, so he began knocking around ideas with buddies he had made, including former pit-crew chief and TV commentator Jeff Hammond.

Racing, of course, is big business, and pit crews seemed to be gaining importance, so he and Hammond figured they could make money training crew members. But they also saw opportunity in a more lucrative market: corporate America. They formed Pit Instruction and Training LLC in 2002 and jump-started it the next year by acquiring RGB Preferred Services Group, a Charlotte company that trained pit-crew members. DeLoach, 60, is majority owner; Hammond helps with strategy and lends his celebrity.

In 2004, the company moved into a new $6 million, 32,000-square-foot complex that anchors a 51/2-acre campus boasting a practice track with six pit stalls, a fitness center, meeting rooms, a dining room and kitchen. Last year, it made its first profit.

Those who want to join a pit crew — often recently graduated high-school athletes — take an eight-week course. The best might be hired by a NASCAR team, usually one with a tight budget. “They need a cheap pit crew, and we’ve got guys who need practical experience.” But most of Pit Instruction’s revenue comes from corporate training — customers include United Airlines, Intel, Best Buy and Penske Truck Leasing — and it holds the most promise for the company’s growth.

A day-and-a-half seminar runs about $50,000 per company and helps teach participants, among other things, how to organize to achieve a goal. The first session is a meeting that relates NASCAR to the corporate world. In the afternoon, participants change tires and simulate refueling with an empty gasoline can. (A full one weighs about 85 pounds — too heavy for many executives.) “We don’t let them jack,” DeLoach says. “I’m not about to let a corporate exec accidentally drop a car on somebody. That would have a real chilling effect on a training exercise.”

The first pit stop usually takes about a minute and a half. After two or three more tries, the normal corporate group will whittle that to about 45 seconds. After dinner, they watch the pros — who often make a pit stop in less than 20 seconds — at work. “Then they get to see how bad they really were,” DeLoach quips. The next morning is a recap of the main lessons. “I think we’ve got something that every corporation in the country could use,” he says. “My biggest problem is: How do I get to the right person to get that light to come on?”

While growing up in Statesboro, Ga., Tom DeLoach Jr. never saw a NASCAR race. He didn’t go to his first until 1986 as vice president of marketing for oil giant Mobil. “I said, ‘Wow, this is neat!’ Boom! The light came on: ‘I like this!’” Eventually, he became the company’s go-to guy for motor sports. Nobody got a sponsorship without his signature. When Mobil merged with Exxon in December 1999, he decided to take a lucrative payout and retire. “I couldn’t stand it. It lasted about two weeks.”

He bought a piece of Roger Penske’s NASCAR team, but when driver Jeremy Mayfield bolted for Evernham Motorsports soon after, Penske bought back his interest. DeLoach wanted to stay in racing, so he began knocking around ideas with buddies he had made, including former pit-crew chief and TV commentator Jeff Hammond.

Racing, of course, is big business, and pit crews seemed to be gaining importance, so he and Hammond figured they could make money training crew members. But they also saw opportunity in a more lucrative market: corporate America. They formed Pit Instruction and Training LLC in 2002 and jump-started it the next year by acquiring RGB Preferred Services Group, a Charlotte company that trained pit-crew members. DeLoach, 60, is majority owner; Hammond helps with strategy and lends his celebrity.

In 2004, the company moved into a new $6 million, 32,000-square-foot complex that anchors a 51/2-acre campus boasting a practice track with six pit stalls, a fitness center, meeting rooms, a dining room and kitchen. Last year, it made its first profit.

Those who want to join a pit crew — often recently graduated high-school athletes — take an eight-week course. The best might be hired by a NASCAR team, usually one with a tight budget. “They need a cheap pit crew, and we’ve got guys who need practical experience.” But most of Pit Instruction’s revenue comes from corporate training — customers include United Airlines, Intel, Best Buy and Penske Truck Leasing — and it holds the most promise for the company’s growth.

A day-and-a-half seminar runs about $50,000 per company and helps teach participants, among other things, how to organize to achieve a goal. The first session is a meeting that relates NASCAR to the corporate world. In the afternoon, participants change tires and simulate refueling with an empty gasoline can. (A full one weighs about 85 pounds — too heavy for many executives.) “We don’t let them jack,” DeLoach says. “I’m not about to let a corporate exec accidentally drop a car on somebody. That would have a real chilling effect on a training exercise.”

The first pit stop usually takes about a minute and a half. After two or three more tries, the normal corporate group will whittle that to about 45 seconds. After dinner, they watch the pros — who often make a pit stop in less than 20 seconds — at work. “Then they get to see how bad they really were,” DeLoach quips. The next morning is a recap of the main lessons. “I think we’ve got something that every corporation in the country could use,” he says. “My biggest problem is: How do I get to the right person to get that light to come on?”

Legislators returned to Raleigh talking tough. Democratic leaders fumed about Gov. Mike Easley’s veto of incentives for Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co., vowing an override. Some Republicans, suddenly finding the slippery slope of incentives to their dislike, spoke of gathering enough votes to sustain the veto. But as often happens in the state capital, bluster turned into murmur. No vote to override occurred. Instead, lawmakers approved broader incentives legislation that satisfied Easley, Goodyear and Goodyear’s top competitor, Bridgestone America Holdings Inc.

So will everybody now go back to their respective benches and allow the game to continue as if nothing happened? Maybe not. The reason for this tussle, after all, was that the original legislation represented a departure from North Carolina’s standing incentives policy. The bill would have allowed cash – up to $4 million a year for 10 years – to go to a business already here, with no promise to create jobs. In fact, the tire maker could even lay off workers. The incentives were provided because Goodyear agreed to invest $200 million for new equipment at its Fayetteville plant.

Easley’s veto brought needed public attention to incentives policy and created real debate about where and how you draw the line on who gets what. Critics condemned both the original bill and the compromise, calling each an invitation for business to blackmail the state. Critics have made similar complaints in the past. It hasn’t stopped the headlong rush into ever more lucrative – and to taxpayers, more costly – offers of tax credits and cash to prompt companies to move or expand plants here.

The complaints didn’t stop incentives this time either. The broader, follow-up bill actually upped the ante, allowing large, existing manufacturers to battle for up to $60 million in cash. Easley did get some worker wage-and-benefit criteria put into it, though qualifying companies could still lay off a portion of their work force. But the bill did trigger a dramatic shift in the political landscape. Nearly in lock step, GOP legislators voted against the follow-up bill. Just three Republicans in the House voted for it. None in the Senate did.

A few true believers on the Republican side, seeing incentives as something akin to socialism, had voted against such packages before. They were typically joined by legislators at the other extreme – liberal Democrats who look at incentives as having a reverse Robin Hood effect, robbing from the poor to give to the rich. But, starting with the job- and equipment-investment tax credits of the Bill Lee Act in the mid-’90s, this had never been a partisan issue. The overwhelming majority on both sides of the aisle pushed the green button when it came time to vote. Some claimed they were holding their noses while doing so, but it didn’t change the outcome.

Perhaps this latest vote will be an aberration. After all, it’s easy to vote against incentives when the threat of job losses doesn’t involve your community. Both the Goodyear plant and the Bridgestone-Firestone plant, in Wilson, lie in Democratic districts. There’s reason to believe, though, that the shift may not be tempo-rary. Easley and the Democrats just opened the lid of Pandora’s box a little wider. It’s safe to assume more companies will come begging, or threatening. The ultimate effect may be to bring more public scrutiny, and disapproval, of incentives.

Meanwhile, the largely party-line vote coincides with one of the leading critics of incentives, former state Supreme Court Justice Bob Orr, making a bid for governor. Not to be outdone, his chief competitors for the Republican nomination – state Sen. Fred Smith of Johnston County and Salisbury lawyer Bill Graham – issued public statements critical of the Goodyear bill.

Orr says his campaign is helping focus attention on the issue. "There’s a tax-fairness issue out there. All the sudden, people are starting to wake up and see this." His views may hurt him when it comes to raising campaign money from business interests. But Brad Crone, a Raleigh-based Democratic political consultant, says incentives policy could have the legs to become a wedge issue, helping a Republican peel Democratic votes from a Democratic nominee.

It remains to be seen whether that will happen, whether there is any vein of public outrage to tap. Should there be, and it’s exploited successfully, political support will begin to erode. Republican success will cause moderate Democrats to be more cautious about leading the incentives cheer. As odd as it might seem, electoral politics might begin putting the brakes on incentives in a way that supposed rational policy debate has not.