Lingle aide gets public housing job
By Jim Dooley
Advertiser Staff Writer
The state's public housing agency yesterday scrapped a nationwide search for a new executive director and selected a longtime aide to Gov. Linda Lingle for the job, citing an "urgent need" to build more low-cost housing and to repair the $1.6 billion existing inventory of residential units.
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 Hawai'i.
Aveiro said she did "a lot of soul searching" before applying 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.
At Aveiro's request, the board named 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 allowed 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.
Federal regulations prohibit a board member of a federally financed housing agency like HCDCH from moving to an executive position in the same agency within a one-year period, but that prohibition was waived by federal housing official Michael Liu, according to Michael Flores, an official of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Liu, a former Republican state senator, is assistant secretary for Indian and Public Housing at HUD, and as such forced the retirement last year of HCDCH executive director Sharyn Miyashiro and the resignations of the entire HCDCH board. Liu accused Miyashiro of violating federal conflict of interest regulations in the award of an HCDCH contract, and he directed that the new Lingle-appointed board of directors look across the country for a qualified replacement.
Last year, outgoing Democratic Gov. Ben Cayetano accused Liu of politicizing problems at HCDCH to help the Lingle gubernatorial campaign, a charge Cayetano repeated yesterday.
"A year later, Liu's accusations of criminal wrongdoing (inside HCDCH) have proved groundless," Cayetano said. "No one has been prosecuted, no monies have been repaid — none of Liu's accusations have amounted to anything."
Liu told HCDCH last year to collect $771,000 spent by the agency on a non-bid housing repair contract awarded by Miyashiro to Punaluu Builders, a company partly owned by her ex-husband, Dennis Mitsunaga, a close friend and major political fund-raiser for Cayetano and other prominent Hawai'i Democratic politicians.
HCDCH has not attempted to collect that money yet and last month awarded a new, competitively-bid contract to Punaluu Builders for construction work on Moloka'i.
Yesterday state Sen. Les Ihara, D-9th (Kapahulu, Kaimuki, Palolo), questioned the propriety of the process followed by the HCDCH board in selecting Aveiro for the director's job.
Ihara said he believed that Aveiro's position as a board member gave her "direct access" to other board members after she had expressed an interest in the executive director's post.
"In my opinion, this gave Ms. Aveiro an advantage over other candidates interested in the same position," Ihara said in a letter to the board.
Board chairman Chuck Sted said the selection process had been cleared by Ethics Commission official Dan Mollway.
Reach Jim Dooley at 535-2447 or jdooley@honoluluadvertiser.com.
