Dwaine Caraway apologizes after council meeting rant

After Dallas Council member Dwaine Caraway went on a rant during a city council briefing Wednesday, FOX 4 wanted to find out more about the budget item that set him off.

The rant began after Council member Philip Kingston questioned the city's $75,000 budget increase for the city's youth commission.

Mary Orsak is a member of the Dallas Youth Commission and is also on the mayor’s Confederate Monument Task Force. She gets to vote like everyone else at the table.

"I think what has surprised me is how receptive they are to the youth perspective,” she said.

Orsak is a senior at the Hockaday School and has been on the city youth commission for two years.

"We have had a budget of about $25,000 per year,” she explained. “We’ve primarily been using that budget to attend National League of Cities conferences — those both in D.C., which is the congressional cities conference and city summits."

The youth commission is essentially a Dallas student council. Caraway leads the commission.

“He's been working very hard to increase our budget so we can hold more large-scale events,” Orsak said.

Caraway's passion for the youth commission became clear Wednesday after Kingston questioned the hefty $75,000 budget increase.

"The $75,000 has never been requested by the youth commission. It’s far in excess of what they need,” Kington said at the city council meeting. “Their budget was completely adequate for what they were doing. Just giving them an extra $15K is saying, ‘Here, take one more trip.’ Giving them an extra $75K is like I honestly don’t think they could figure out how to spend it."

Caraway had a fiery response to Kingston’s comments.

“A selfish personal victory, and it pisses me off,” Caraway said. “I want you to understand that it pisses me off.”

Caraway claimed the move was politically motivated and threatened to question all of the items in Kingston's district in the future.

“I know how to play cards,” Caraway told Kingston. “I know how to play cards!”

Caraway later apologized to his colleagues.

“That's not my normal behavior,” he said. “But at the same time, sometimes you have to have that behavior so you can stop the vicious villain from misleading and lying.”

The increase will bring the youth commission's budget to $100,000.