Isle housing agency gets
a new executive director
Stephanie Aveiro, who led Maui County's public housing program for eight years under then-Mayor Linda Lingle, was selected yesterday to head the state's troubled public housing agency under Gov. Lingle after the waiver of a federal rule that prohibited her appointment.
She was approved unanimously to serve as executive director of the state Housing and Community Development Corp. of Hawaii by the agency's board, on which she was a member appointed by Lingle. She recused herself from yesterday's vote and resigned from the board upon her appointment.
The selection comes nearly a year after pressure from Michael Liu, the U.S. Housing and Urban Development assistant secretary for public and Indian housing, forced the resignation of the previous executive director and the agency's board.
Liu, a former state senator and a Republican candidate for lieutenant governor in 1998, said a $771,000 repair contract awarded to Punaluu Builders violated federal law because of a financial relationship between the company's founder and part-owner, Dennis Mitsunaga, and the then-head of the HCDCH, Sharyn Miyashiro, Mitsunaga's ex-wife. Liu also said the contract amount was inflated.
Liu's Nov. 1, 2002, letter to the agency demanding return of the $771,000 was made public four days before the Nov. 5 general election in which Republican Lingle defeated Democrat Mazie Hirono. Then-Gov. Ben Cayetano, a Democrat, charged the timing was motivated by Lingle's making public corruption a campaign issue.
HCDCH manages more than 80 federally and state-funded housing projects with a total of about 6,500 units serving about 25,000 low-income residents.
A federal rule bars HCDCH board members from taking executive posts within the agency within a one-year period, but Liu sent the agency a letter yesterday waiving that rule, Aveiro said.
Aveiro's selection came after the board voted to terminate the 11-month national search Liu had recommended. It was part of the agreement he had reached with the state to correct what Liu said were serious management and operational weaknesses in public housing programs.
Aveiro, who has served since December 2002 as a special assistant to Lingle overseeing the Washington Place Museum and grounds, said she volunteered to take the post because of a sense of urgency after no suitable candidates were found in the national search.
"I just feel that we need to do certain things, and we need to do it quickly because it in fact affects the lives of the children and their families and the seniors and the disabled that live in public housing," she said. "It's an extremely complex agency."
Aveiro said the state needs to follow the federal government's shift in philosophy toward providing social services to those in public housing to enable tenants to improve their status and move out of housing.
The board also approved the appointment of Pamela Dodson, a Lingle executive assistant serving in the Office of Collective Bargaining, to be Aveiro's executive assistant. Dodson served three years as marketing manager of the Maui Arts & Cultural Center and three years as an executive assistant to Lingle on Maui.
State law sets the HCDCH executive director salary between $72,886 and $77,966, and the assistant job between $65,559 and $70,169.