Dwaine Caraway Steered $72K to a Political Crony, and It Vanished. A Struggling Community Fears a Redux

This story was produced in partnership with KXAS-TV (NBC-5).A decade ago, Dallas Mayor Pro Tem Dwaine Caraway convinced a company that needed his vote to donate tens of thousands of dollars to a political ally’s nonprofit. The money was supposed to help the city’s oldest black neighborhood.The company got what it wanted: permission to put an asphalt plant in Joppa. But the neighborhood never benefited from the donations, according to the nonprofit’s former directors.That’s because the money vanished, they say.Today the story of the missing money looms large as Caraway and Claudia Fowler, the longtime Joppa resident who headed the nonprofit, are involved in a similar effort that some residents fear threatens recent progress in rebuilding the historic freed-slave settlement.Back in 2008, Caraway negotiated a behind-the-scenes deal between Austin Industries and Fowler. Austin agreed to make the donations just days before Caraway led a City Council vote to approve the company’s proposal for an asphalt processing plant, The Dallas Morning News found.Fowler’s nonprofit received $72,000 in donations over six years, according to Austin Industries. But the company stopped the payments in 2015 when it couldn’t account for how her organization managed the funds, company officials told The News.  Continue reading...