A Bronx state senator is facing charges that he stole state funds to pay personal expenses that included rent on two residences in the Dominican Republic and the bills from his cigar company.

Federal prosecutors say the senator, Efrain Gonzalez Jr., 58, regularly directed state funds to a Bronx charity and then used the charity as a personal bank. The allegations are expected to put pressure on the Legislature to curb the $170 million it spends annually funding so-called member-items, which are the pet projects of assemblymen and senators.

“Demonstrated by this case is the fact that member-item expenditures present corruption vulnerabilities,” the commissioner of the city’s Department of Investigation, Rose Gill Hearn, said yesterday at a news conference announcing the charges.

Mr. Gonzalez, a Democrat, is the seventh member of the city’s delegation to Albany to be indicted on corruption-related charges in the last three years. In all, nine politicians from the city’s 80-member delegation have been charged with crimes in that time.

In the past six months, state prosecutors have charged Assemblywoman Diane Gordon of Brooklyn with accepting bribes and federal prosecutors have charged Assemblyman Brian McLaughlin with racketeering and embezzlement.

Even as Ms. Hearn announced the latest charges against a legislator, she cautioned against jumping to the conclusion that Albany was experiencing a crime wave, as one political observer, Henry Stern of New York Civic, suggested in July when Ms. Gordon was indicted.

She said that there are “dozens and dozens of lawmakers working very hard in Albany.”

The “common-denominator” in the latest three such cases was her office’s investigative work, she said.

The U.S. Attorney for Manhattan, Michael Garcia, who is prosecuting the case, said, “I am not going to say everyone in this particular branch of government is corrupt.”

The charges unsealed yesterday replace an indictment against Mr. Gonzalez unsealed in August charging him with mail fraud by taking money from the Bronx nonprofit, the Pathways for Youth, Inc. The old indictment did not allege that Mr. Gonzalez used his elected office illegally, as the new indictment does.

“As a New York State Senator, Efrain Gonzalez, Jr., the defendant, therefore owed New York State citizens a duty to refrain from abusing the member items process for personal gain,” according to the indictment.

An attorney for Mr. Gonzalez, Murray Richman, said, “We assert that we are not guilty and we will confront these allegations in court.”

The indictment also charges three other individuals associated with Mr. Gonzalez, including the director of Pathways, Neil Berger, who is accused of writing numerous checks from Pathways’ account to an organization that Mr. Gonzalez controlled. The second organization, the West Bronx Neighborhood Association, occupies an adjoining room to Mr. Gonzalez’s district office, and served to cover the senator’s personal expenses, prosecutors said.

Mr. Gonzalez is accused of spending more than $400,000 of Pathways’ money to pay for renovations to his mother in law’s Dominican Republic home and rent for his wife’s apartment in the Dominican Republic among other expenses, according to the indictment. Between the years 1999 and 2005 he directed $423,000 of state money to Pathways, according to the indictment.

Mr. Garcia also said that $9,000 of state funds went to design and print cigar bands for the New York-based cigar distribution company that Mr. Gonzalez owns. The cigar bands were labeled with politically-themed names such as “Senator” and “Assembly,” prosecutors said.

Pathways’ stated intent was to improve the welfare of young people and was formerly known as the Boys’ Athletic League. The federal government is a large source of its funding.

Mr. Gonzalez is scheduled to be arraigned on the new counts of mail fraud and wire fraud in U.S. District Court in Manhattan on Friday.

When the charges against him were announced, Mr. Gonzalez was in Albany for a special legislative session. First elected in 1989, Mr. Gonzalez has a reputation for his unassuming presence in Albany.

He is currently the chairman of the Senate Democratic Conference. He was born in Puerto Rico and entered politics as a representative of the city’s transit worker’s union. He is involved with the National Hispanic Caucus of State Legislators, and requested for his August bail order to be changed to allow him to attend various caucus events in five states, Puerto Rico, Ecuador, and Washington D.C.

“He hasn’t done anything,” the previous senator from Mr. Gonzalez’s district, Israel Ruiz, said, referring to Mr. Gonzalez’ tenure. “He hasn’t improved anything. You don’t hear him on any issue. He’s not involved in any issue. He could care less. He deserves whatever he gets because he should have known better.”

Mr. Ruiz said Mr. Gonzalez had once worked in his Bronx district office in the late 1970s. Mr. Gonzalez won the Senate position in 1989, after Mr. Ruiz was convicted of making false statements on a bank loan application.