A top executive of a trade association that lobbies for local housing authorities was hired by the Department of Housing and Urban Development to regulate those same authorities — and was allowed to keep her paid job at the lobbying association at the same time.

HUD’s Inspector General said the 2011 hiring of Debra Gross, deputy director of the Council of Large Public Housing Authorities, was an “inherent conflict of interest” in the same way it would be to hire an Exxon lobbyist to regulate oil companies.