SHEBOYGAN, WI (WHBL) - Sheboygan County District Attorney Joe DeCecco announced Monday he will not seek re-election for this position this fall. DeCecco has served as the county’s top prosecutor since he was first elected to it in 2002, and will end a 27 year career as a state prosecutor at the end of the year.
DeCecco tells WHBL News this was a decision that he has considered for some time, but finally decided to go forward with it during his off time for the Christmas holiday. “I’ve been here a long time, and I’m 66 now and I want to leave when I have the faculties to do a good job. I would have committed to running for another term, (but) it’s a four year term. I wasn’t going to run and say after a year or two ‘I’m done, I’m leaving’; I would have to commit to a four year term, and I just decided now is the time.”
In a statement, DeCecco says deciding to retire is not easy. “Of all the decisions I have made in my career, the decision to retire has been the most difficult. It has been my privilege and pleasure to work with my fellow prosecutors throughout the state, along with county, state and federal law enforcement agencies, county staff and Sheboygan County citizens to make our communities safe places to live, work, and raise families, and to bring to justice those who would make it otherwise.”
DeCecco adds his only regret while serving as District Attorney has been a failure to create additional prosecutor positions statewide to address a shortage, one that he has been an outspoken advocate about. Saying in a statement; “Since my election as Sheboygan County District Attorney in 2002, the prosecutor shortage has been constantly on my mind and the focus of my efforts to obtain additional prosecutors not only for Sheboygan County, but throughout the state. I am very sorry to have failed to do so.”
DeCecco, who moved from Rhode Island to Wisconsin in 1985, tells WHBL News he plans to stay in Wisconsin once 2017 comes. “I teach at Lakeland, and I think I like to expand that somewhat, and then just take it easy, to be honest with you, just to kind of enjoy it. Do a little more traveling. I’ve seen a lot of the country but there’s still a great part of the country that I haven’t seen at all, so I’d like to go through the U.S. and see places I haven’t been to before.”