It’s been a year since news reports first revealed Hawaii County Mayor Billy Kenoi’s indiscretions when it came to using his taxpayer-funded county purchasing card.

The mayor is — unbelievably — still in office. And now he’s been indicted, too.

He really needs to resign and let someone else guide the county through the eight months remaining in his term.

After months of investigation, state Attorney General Doug Chin’s office obtained an indictment of Kenoi on March 23 on eight felony and misdemeanor charges related to the credit card abuse. Chin’s office agreed to take on the matter at the request of the County of Hawaii prosecutor’s office to avoid any appearance of bias.

Kenoi surrendered to authorities March 29, but not to the troubling realities that remaining in office would represent for him and his Hawaii Island constituents. Kenoi’s attorney said the mayor has no intention of resigning and that Kenoi fully repaid every personal expense in question.

It’s a rather breathtaking defense. Kenoi’s lawyer makes no claim of innocence, but essentially says that because he reimbursed the taxpayers — eventually — all should be forgiven.

“Mayor Kenoi is heartened by the outpouring of support he has received from the people of Hawaii Island,” said attorney Todd Eddins in a prepared statement the day that Kenoi turned himself in at the Pahoa Police Station. “He will continue to work tirelessly for his hometown.”

Hawaii Island residents are expected to believe that Kenoi can effectively represent the public’s interest while he is forced to devote significant time in preparations for what could be a serious criminal trial.

The most substantial single felony charge the mayor faces carries a penalty of up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000. Not the sort of thing one prepares to defend against part-time.

Time was, a public servant’s basic sense of honor would have dictated a resignation in the face of such tacky and flatly illegal behavior. It’s not as though Kenoi is accused of using his P-card to buy groceries for a family impacted by the island’s dengue fever outbreak or to put one of the island’s growing number of homeless people up in a hotel.

No, he blew hundreds of dollars at “hostess bars” and more than $1,200 on a surfboard, among other creative uses he found for his taxpayer-backed credit card.

When the dust finally settled, Kenoi repaid a total of nearly $32,000 in personal expenses. How much of that might ever have come out of his own bank account had not his spending behavior been exposed is an appropriate subject for discussion.

None of this would have ever been known if Nancy Cook Lauer of West Hawaii Today had not doggedly pursued it for five years. Her records requests for copies of Kenoi’s P-card receipts had been ignored by county government until a source shared records with Lauer of $892 in P-card charges that Kenoi racked up at a Honolulu hostess bar in late 2013.

The people of Hawaii Island owe Lauer major thanks for her persistence in looking out for their interests.

And Mayor Kenoi owes them a resignation. It’s a debt he should make good on without delay — citizens have already waited long enough.