Taking away county functions through the law is untenable

One principal objective of devolved government was to facilitate devolution of economic power through appropriate allocation of functions and resources. Consequently, most contentions between the two levels of government in the first five years of devolution related to function transfer and revenue allocation. From the perspective of county governments, the national government was at best, a reluctant purveyor of the functions that the Constitution has allocated to counties. In some instances, the national government either outrightly refused to transfer functions or transferred only components of county government functions. In the more common scenario, functions would be transferred but the funds required to perform the functions would remain with the national government.

Of course, part of the failure in regard to function transfer can be placed at the door of the Transitional Authority, that had been legally mandated to facilitate the transfer of the functions. The Authority, either for lack of resources, capacity or support from concerned national agencies failed to conclude the transfer of functions by the time its term came to an end. To the credit of both levels of government and the Intergovernmental Relations Technical Committee, the successor to the Transition Authority, many of the function transfer related issues have been largely resolved and consultations on solutions to subsisting issues are ongoing.