“This is like the ghost of the past — it keeps haunting us,” Somanath said Tuesday of the audit findings.

The authority’s board last month agreed to reimburse the federal government $100,000 annually for more than 60 years to repay money administrators had been taking improperly from other accounts to prop up an outsized administration.

That money was intended to support the operation of public housing units, according to the inspector general’s report.

“We had some real legacy issues, if you will, where there had been serious problems that were not necessarily shared with the board,” said Robley S. Jones Jr., chairman of the agency’s board of commissioners.

That hasn’t been the case under Somanath’s leadership, Jones said.

“Every meeting as we move forward, there’s less of this,” Jones said. “We’ve been working hard to increase transparency.”

Somanath pointed to the elimination of 19 positions — many from the agency’s central office — last year as proof of his commitment to fiscal discipline.

“That has been the problem here,” Somanath said. “I’ve worked hard to promote accountability.”