No end to Senators, Governors turf wars

By MOSES NJAGIH

KENYA: The Senate has moved to impose its oversight role over county governments, preparing a raft of legislative measures to place checks on the expenditures by Governors and their executive teams.

The move, Senators say, is also meant to contain arbitrary taxations. With public uproar over what the electorate feels is wasteful spending on the part of the county governments, Senators have lined up measures to ensure reasonable revenue goes to development as opposed to recurrent expenditure.

The move is likely to worsen the frosty relationship between Governors and Senators, who have been warring since last year when the latter passed a Bill introducing the County Development Boards, to oversee the development priorities in the counties.

Governors opposed this claiming the move was meant to clip their executive powers.

And now before the dust settles on this war front, a section of Senators have crafted an amendment to the Public Finance Management Act to ensure more resources are channeled to development projects.

Majority Leader Kithure Kindiki, Elgeyo Marakwet Senator Kipchumba Murkomen, Nandi’s Stephen Sang and Majority Chief Whip Beatrice Elachi have proposed amendments to Article 107(2)(b), doubling the minimum revenue to be channeled to development of counties to 60 percent.

From another front, Meru Senator Kiraitu Murungi has filed a Motion seeking the establishment of a committee that will place checks on “arbitrary taxation” measures being imposed by counties in their bid to raise revenue.

In the Bill by Kindiki and the three Senators, which is awaiting the convening of the House on February 11, they propose amending the law which gives the development vote in counties a minimum of 30 percent of county revenue, terming that as likely to encourage county executives to spend more on luxuries under recurrent vote.

Devolution agenda

Kindiki argues that the Bill has been necessitated by indicators from counties where little attention is being given to the development agenda, which he argues was the core reason for devolution.

“The feedback we are getting from the electorate is that there are no development activities taking place in many counties and that is also corroborated by the report recently released by the Controller of Budget,” said Kindiki.

He adds: “While we understand there was no much allocation that would have been channeled to development, our move is only a pre-emptive strategy to caution counties now that we have seen much of that allocation went to construction of mansions, entertainment allowances and buying of luxurious vehicles for Governors and their executives”.

The Tharaka Nithi Senator says that the proposed law is also informed by the stipulations of Article 201 of the Constitution on Principles of Public Finance, and Articles 174/5 on devolution, which says expenditure for public finance should go to promotion of development services.

He argues that counties must move away from the “bad experience” of the national government in the last 50 years and that of the defunct local authorities, whose expenditures went to sustaining of the bloated workforce and financing debts.

“As a Senate, with our key responsibility being protecting counties and county governments, we do not want to see these devolved units inheriting the things that have pulled down the former local authorities,” added Murkomen, who is also the Senate chairman of the powerful committee on Devolved Government.

Both Kindiki and Murkomen argues that while Senators are willing to ensure increased allocation to counties to 40 percent of the national revenue, as stated in the Jubilee manifesto, they are also keen on ensuring that much of this money goes to development projects.

“We launched what we called operation pesa mashinani and we were lauded for the move, now we want to balance that with operation maendeleo mashinani, through that proposed Bill,” says Kindiki.

Governors, in the meantime have hit out at these moves by the Senators, accusing the legislators of making moves that negates their constitutional responsibilities of protecting the devolved governments.

Chairman of the Council of Governors, Bomet Governor Isaac Ruto, has led the crusade against what they term as moves by the Senators to cripple devolution, arguing that Senators have abdicated their mandate and were now working with forces keen on frustrating devolution. But the Senators defended their actions, accusing the governors of being selective in their reading of the Senate’s mandate in the Constitution.

Kindiki says that apart from protecting county governments, Senate is also bestowed the oversight roles of the devolved units, arguing that that was what they are doing by placing checks on expenditures and taxation measures.

Oversight role

“Governors only look at our protective roles under Article 96(1) and 96(2). They ignore 96(3) on our oversight role. It is sad that when we legislate for purposes of oversighting counties, they consider us as enemies of devolution,” says the Leader of Majority.

Kindiki says that he is also preparing a Bill for creation of the Ward Development Fund, modeled in the same manner as the Constituency Development Fund (CDF), to be under the patronage of MCA’s and to champion development at Ward levels.

“I would be seeking to have a small percentage of revenue from the national government to go to this fund so that we have another tier of financial devolution at the ward level,” he said.

To ensure that MCA’s stamps their legislative authority, Kindiki says he intends to publish the County Assemblies (Immunities and Previliges) Bill 2014 and further push for their improved terms and conditions to levels comparable to those in the Executives.

“Our ideal statistic is that MCAs should earn 45 per cent of what Governors earn, just as it happens at the national level, so they can exert their legislative authorities over the county executives,” he says.