MONTICELLO – Legislative Chair Nadia Rajsz announced to the full board of the Sullivan County Legislature on Thursday that Deputy County Attorney Tom Cawley will be retiring in November. 

Before he took up his role with the county, Cawley began his career in local government after he graduated from Hofstra Law School. He joined the Sullivan County District Attorney’s office in 1993 as the eighth Assistant District Attorney under former DA Steve Lungen.

“I just want to say how grateful I am for all of his help, insight and institutional knowledge into helping this government run smoothly,” Rajsz stated. “He was our Parlimentarian and I will miss him tremendously. Good luck in your retirement, Tom.”

Cawley said what he will miss the most in retirement is the people he works with. 

“There’s a lot of really good people who do their jobs very well here,” he pronounced. “I will miss that, the camaraderie. Some of my best friends are here, Laura [Quigley] being one of them. There’s been a lot of turnover over the years and that’s the nature of what we do.”

When asked what he will miss the least and what he is looking forward to saying goodbye to, Cawley said it is the tension and stress that the job causes. 

“I don’t like knowing where are the rocks and slugs are located,” Cawley said. “Everything bad and wrong that happens in the county funnels through the county attorney’s office. We deal with the family court stuff, the removals and abuse. It’s a lot of stuff I can do without. 

“There’s a lot of angst, bad stuff that we deal with,” Cawley continued. “Some of it is very much of human nature, some of it is just tension and dog fights over things that really shouldn’t matter and the blasé attitude about the things that really should matter.”

When asked by the Democrat what he looks forward to most in retirement, Cawley said that he and his wife had to put off a lot of plans for vacations and trips that they will now look to enjoy. He noted the County Attorney’s office has been so understaffed it has been tough for him to get away for a week or two. Cawley also said that he and his wife had a cruise booked but that it got dumped due to the Covid-19 pandemic. 

“We’re both beach people, so we are thinking somewhere near the Jersey Shore,” he said. “I have lived my entire life either within an hour or hour and a half drive of New York City or Chicago. So I can’t be in the middle of nowhere, that doesn’t interest either one of us. We are thinking maybe southern Jersey or Delaware, close enough that we can drive to events.”

Cawley said that his wife’s famly lives in Northern New Jersey and his family is out on the east end of Long Island, so they want to be within a driveable area of both of them.