Providence City Council President Luis A. Aponte's indictment comes in a year when state or federal prosecutors have charged or convicted legislators Raymond Gallison, John Carnevale and Peter Palumbo and an Aponte council ally, Kevin Jackson. In 2014, there was the bribery conviction of former speaker of the House and Providence legislator Gordon Fox.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — On Feb. 5, 2015, new Mayor Jorge O. Elorza and City Council President Luis A. Aponte were in Elorza’s City Hall office to jointly announce the rejuvenation of the city’s moribund municipal Ethics Commission.

On Wednesday, that event became ironic. According to an indictment released Wednesday by Rhode Island Attorney General Peter F. Kilmartin, when Aponte helped unveil that new ethics initiative in 2015, he had been using campaign funds for personal use for more than a year.

When Elorza defeated Vincent A. "Buddy" Cianci Jr. in 2014 , it was supposed to be a mayoral election that ended an era of corruption in city politics. But Aponte’s indictment comes in a year when state or federal prosecutors have charged or convicted legislators Raymond Gallison, John Carnevale and Peter Palumbo and an Aponte council ally, Kevin Jackson. In 2014, there was the bribery conviction of former speaker of the House and Providence legislator Gordon Fox.

That might sound depressing. But former U.S. Attorney Peter F. Neronha, whose office convicted three North Providence town councilmen, the mayor of Central Falls, Gallison and Fox, said things have changed — in at least one respect.

A decade ago, indictments might have been met with shrugs of indifference. But Carnevale’s case cost him a House leadership post. In Providence last week, voters removed Jackson from office in a recall election.

“They are reacting with distaste,” Neronha said. “That wasn’t always the case.”

Providence seems to be part-way there.

Elorza has called on Aponte to step down as council president.

“I don’t know what’s taking him so long,” Elorza said Thursday. “He has lost the moral authority to lead.”

Five councilmen, Wilbur Jennings Jr., Nicholas Narducci, David Salvatore, Seth Yurdin and Samuel Zurier, have introduced a resolution calling on Aponte to resign as president, saying his standing “both within the city and the state has diminished to a level where he no longer can serve effectively in the position of City Council president.”

Aponte’s council supporters have held off. Council President Pro-Tem Sabina Matos and Majority Leader Bryan Principe issued the kind of wait-and-see statements that Neronha said were in the past.

Councilwoman Mary Kay Harris said she was confident Aponte “would do the right thing. Whatever that might be.”

The Jackson and Aponte cases, as well as Fox’s, hinged on their use of campaign funds. Both Aponte and Jackson were chronically late with their campaign contribution and expense reports. Jackson was fined $10,000 by the Rhode Island Board of Elections for failing to file for four years. Aponte had run up fines of more than $47,000 for his failures to file. Richard E. Thornton, the state Board of Election’s director of campaign finance said once the reports came in, the irregularities that led to their charges emerged.

Neronha said the Aponte, Jackson and Fox cases had threads that are common to many public corruption prosecutions. They all involved misuse of campaign funds, he said, and for relatively small amounts of money and the cases were built on examining those campaign finance records.

“That’s how we got Fox,” Neronha said. “They are all mini-Foxes.”

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Kevin Jackson was ousted in the state's first-ever recall election. The first elected official in Rhode Island to be removed via a recall election was Smithfield Town Councilman Stephen G. Tocco, in 2007.