Let’s give county governments ample time to prove their worth

There are people who express pessimism about future success of county governments.

They argue that based on recent media reports and their observations in the past four months, indications are that there is corruption in procurement, misappropriation of funds, nepotism in recruitments, misplaced priorities, and simply lack of accountability.

They charge that Governors are becoming imperial ‘autocrats’ who want to splash resources in opulence, living on the fast lane and that the County Assemblies are nothing more the usual rowdy group of councillors.

They also disregard public participation as nothing more than a cosmetic exercise by the county regimes that means nothing, and that residents in most counties are undiscerning and gullible. And so they conclude that resources should not be wasted on counties. I do not hold brief for anyone save the great people of Mandera County on this matter.

Through our collective responsibility as Senate though, we have a constitutional mandate to serve the interest of counties and exercise oversight over their utilisation of resources. Hence, my concern when I read about these adverse views expressed about counties. Firstly, people with these skepticism about the counties are preciously few, especially professionals who failed to land jobs in the counties, political opponents of the county regimes and some members of the national assembly who feel the governor is the elephant in the room.

It is also important to note that in the first budgets drawn by these counties, media reports have highlighted misplaced priorities in some counties, and extravagance by others. For the first four months to June 30, the county governments received some money for specific recurrent expenses such as salaries and overheads as outlined in appropriations approved by the National Assembly in January this year.

 The Auditor General has commenced audit of these expenditures to give us an idea on just how well this money was utilised. Without premptying his findings, I am aware some counties indeed used this small allocation for worthwhile development projects, after making savings on operational overheads.  

Now, this year’s budgets are yet to be approved for disbursements by the Controller of Budget who has to date been categorical that her office will make a thorough scrutiny of the county budgets before authorising release of funds from the exchequer. That means the budgets as passed by the County Assemblies are not final. The law authorises the Assemblies to reallocate funds through supplementaries.

This being their first year, counties did not have clear guidelines on budget preparation, including what expense items are permitted under the county mandate as the Transitional Authority had not unbundled their functions at the time the budgets were being drawn. It is also clear that the national government which is legally charged with building the capacity of the county governments did not have adequate time to comprehensively perform that role.

The procurement law in force is not yet tailored to meet the operational needs of the counties. Compliance with this law will no doubt create massive operational delays for the counties, and is costly too.

Once this law is being reviewed, concerns about possible graft will be addressed, and the public will have an input in the process. The public, through their representatives, have a greater role in decision making in the success of the counties. All plans, policies and projects must be endorsed by these assemblies. Much of the counties structure is modelled ailing the national government structure. We, however, do not expect the county regimes to copy the failures of the national government too. The taste of the pudding is in the eating.

The writer is a political economist and Mandera County Senator