The assembly and the executive are the two arms that form the devolved county governments.
There are many provisions in the 2010 constitution that give legal basis for their existence, principally being to afford opportunity for residents to actively participate in development, giving the minorities and the marginalised communities an avenue of representation and integration in running of county governments; having public participation in budget processes and development of County Integrated Development Plans (CIDP). More importantly, however, are the political decisions that local communities exercise through their elected representatives.
There are 1,450 wards in the 47 counties and a huge number of nominated MCAs to bridge the two-thirds gender gap, cater for youth and people living with disabilities in representation.
County assemblies have huge responsibilities in facilitating development through debates and legislation. They have a pivotal role to enhance and entrench the ethos and practice of public participation, where residents’ views are sought and incorporated in legislations and policy initiatives. It is the passage of budget estimates prepared by the executive that opens the implementation of development priorities identified by residents.
Assemblies thus exercise huge leverage in resource allocation. It is, however, in the accountability on allocated and generated revenues and oversight by the assembly against the expenditures by the executive that all assemblies have fallen short of.
Reports by the Auditor General since 2013-14 paint a very depressing scenario, where assemblies went on a spending spree and joined the executives to pilfer, misappropriate and misuse allocated resources. With over Sh1.5 trillion already released to the counties since 2013, not much can be seen in the counties.
Assemblies have failed to tame the huge wage bills by adding more staff for themselves and others going to bed with the executive and pushing for their relatives to be employed.
Failure to tame the wage bill lies squarely on the Public Service Commission of Kenya, the Council of Governors, the Salaries and Remuneration Commission and the National Treasury. All these entities slept on the job and deliberately turned a blind eye on nepotism and haphazard recruitment, which have kept the bills rising with a cost to common mwananchi. Controller of Budget reports have consistently shown that almost half of the counties do not spend up to the required 30 per cent of their revenue allocations on development yet this is a cardinal requirement in the Public Finance and Management Act of 2012 and the subsequent regulations issues by the National Treasury.
County Assemblies are guided by the county Assembly Service Act of 2017, famously referred to as the Wako Bill, and the County Government Act of 2012 in discharge of its mandate. County assembly service boards are the executive organs of the assembly which have the speaker as the chairman, two members representing public interest, two members drawn from political parties represented in the assembly and the assembly clerk acts as its secretary, implementer of resolutions of the board, adviser and custodian of its records. The board prepares the assembly budget and upon approval by the assembly, superintends over its expenditures. The board establishes and abolishes offices, ensures continuous capacity building of assembly members and assembly staff; creates a conducive environment to facilitate members of the county assembly to undertake their core roles of legislation, representation and oversight, and ensure the parliamentary practice, democracy and tradition are enhanced.
With such a huge mandate and powers over budgets, staffing, trainings and administration of members’ loans and mortgages, the County Assembly Service Board has become a coveted institution for control by MCAs and the executive. This has contributed to the instability currently being witnessed in most assemblies. Any county executive who is not in good books with the assembly is finding easy political breather in destabilising the assembly boards.
The scenario is compounded by MCAs, particularly the Majority and Minority leaders and the respective chief whips who fail to adhere to the procedures, Standing Orders and relevant laws. Ugly incidences witnessed in Kakamega, Homa Bay, Nairobi, Kisumu and Embu are just tips of the iceberg. Many assemblies are unstable to discharge their mandates effectively and efficiently.
The county assembly boards are hamstrung, specifically in the fight against corruption. Board members watch and go along whenever MCAs demand for allowances, trips, committee sittings that are not budgeted for. This is the sorry state of affairs that has consistently undermined service delivery by the assembly boards and the county assembly itself. The county residents will hence continue to feel cheated and frustrated for lacking service benchmarks and deliverables by MCAs despite the revenue allocations through the service boards. The buck stops at the Senate to ensure service boards are not only properly constituted, but are functional, are conforming to public finance provisions plus all other relevant laws in support of county assemblies in the discharge of their respective mandates.
John Burugu is a devolution, policy and governance expert