Editorial Shorts

Banking on a name

The announcement this week that BB&T will buy the naming rights for the downtown baseball stadium for 15 years, while not surprising, was welcome. This corporate confidence in the project should be followed by consumer confidence. It's all part of the vision of bringing business to the city and revitalization to the western edge of downtown.

Tony Plath of UNC Charlotte told the Journal's Richard Craver that BB&T's motivation is likely three-fold: "part a symbolic gesture to the community, it's part an effort to repair some of the public-relations damage caused by a contentious project involving taxpayer dollars, and it's also part defensive move on the part of BB&T."

The bank wouldn't want another financial institution to step on its turf and grab the naming rights, he explained. And of locally based companies, BB&T has the best financial prospects to carry off the naming rights for years to come.

The announcement is another big sign that the stadium project is gaining momentum. Despite this week's light snow, there's still strong reason to believe that the finishing touches will be done on the stadium by April 13, opening day for the Winston-Salem Dash, the stadium tenant. The new Dash president, Geoff Lassiter, a former assistant athletics director at Wake Forest University, has brought a contagious enthusiasm to the job.

Team officials said they have secured enough revenue from season-ticket commitments and sponsorships to make their first-year loan payments to the city of Winston-Salem. That's encouraging to know. Let's hope that many more ticket sales come this season for games at BB&T Ballpark.

Helping victims

Charmaine Fuller Cooper, who starts work next week as the first executive director of a new foundation to study compensation for victims of the state's forced sterilization program, should come in like we've always heard March does: Roaring like a lion. The sterilization victims deserve nothing less.

For more than seven years now, since a Journal investigative series first exposed in detail the sordid machinations of the state's eugenics sterilization program, the victims have continued to suffer from mental and physical scars as they've listened to politicians promise help. That help is long past due for the victims of this program that operated from 1929 through 1974, sterilizing more than 7,600 men, women and children. Most were poor, and many were bullied into the operations by over-zealous social workers who ginned up petitions charging potential patients with being "feebleminded" and promiscuous.

Justice ignored the victims, many of whom have died. Gov. Bev. Perdue promised to help them as she campaigned for her job in 2008. Cooper must finally carry out that promise. The victims deserve educational and health-care benefits -- which should have been secured years ago through state universities and hospitals. And, with the economy slowly improving, financial compensation should be strongly considered as well.

Cooper has strong credentials for this work. She comes to the foundation from the helm of the Carolina Justice Policy Center in Durham, a nonprofit that helped push the legislature last year to pass the Racial Justice Act. It allows the introduction of evidence of racial bias in death-penalty cases. "My career has always been focused on being a voice for people who don't have a voice," she told the Journal's Mary Giunca.

These victims need a voice to finally get their compensation -- quickly.

Chained dogs

Tim Jennings, Forsyth County's director of animal control, says there haven't been any human fatalities involving tethered, or chained, dogs in his six years on the job. But it could only be a matter of time.

Studies have shown that fatalities, especially of children, have resulted elsewhere from people approaching aggressive chained dogs. And the cruelty to many of the dogs should be obvious in this county. "Tethered dogs can jump a fence and hang themselves," Jennings recently told the Journal's Wesley Young. "The dogs can get tangled up and can't reach water."

Animal-control officers occasionally see chained dogs that have been so neglected their skin and fur grows over their collar. Other chained dogs, included one this year in the county, have died from exposure to the weather.

The Forsyth County Animal Control advisory board is taking public comments on a proposed ban on chained dogs. So far, residents are overwhelmingly in favor of a generally reasonable proposal for a ban: Tethering would be allowed in temporary situations, such as hunting or camping, or even for short periods in backyards. Dogs would continue to be free to roam in fenced-in backyards.

The rules would be phased in over an 18- to 24-month period -- an eternity that could literally leave some dogs hanging. Help with costs or construction of fenced-in areas would be available. A group called the Coalition to Unchain Dogs is already active, with volunteers who can build the fences.

As with other issues involving pets, the problem is irresponsible owners, not their dogs. The advisory board will take public comments through the end of March, and decide in April whether to make a recommendation to the board of commissioners. We'll be waiting to hear any good reasons to keep chaining dogs. It could be a long wait.