Stephanie Aveiro, who ran the Housing and Human Concerns Department on Maui when Lingle was mayor there, and who now manages the governor’s residence on the grounds of Washington Place, was a unanimous selection of the Lingle-appointed board of directors of the Housing and Community Development Corp. of Hawaii.

Aveiro said she did "a lot of soul searching" before volunteering her services for the post and said she’s aware of "the many challenges" involved in heading an agency that has been buffeted by adverse federal audits and charges of cronyism in recent years.

The board picked Pamela Dodson, another Lingle aide who followed the governor from Maui to state government, to serve as Aveiro’s executive assistant at HCDCH.

And the board voted to pay Aveiro $77,966 and Dodson $70,169, the maximum salaries allowable under state law for the two posts.

Aveiro was appointed to the HCDCH board by Lingle in January but did not vote today on the motions to hire herself and Dodson for the management jobs. She said she intended to send Lingle a formal letter of resignation from the board position later today.

Federal regulations prohibit a board member of a federally funded housing agency like HCDCH from moving to an executive position with the same agency within a one-year period, but that prohibition was waived today by federal housing official Michael Liu, according to Michael Flores, an official of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.