• Counties can no longer continue depending on shareable revenue and there is need for them to come up with measures to improve own revenue collection.
• County staff have gone without salaries and more operations are set to be grounded if a solution on the deadlock is not found soon.
Counties are facing a lot of delays in the disbursement of funds by the National Treasury especially to finance development programmes.
The situation has been compounded by the stalemate over the third basis formula for the sharing of revenue by counties after the Senate failed to debate the report.
The next effect of the current situation is that counties stare at near collapse of services on devolved functions.
For instance, the country is coming to the end of the first month of the 2020/2021 financial year, yet counties have not received any money from the national government because of the deadlock.
County staff have gone without salaries and more operations are set to be grounded if a solution to the deadlock is not found soon.
Our hope is that senators can reach a quick resolution to the standoff and agree on the way forward that would avert counties from further suffering.
Regarding the shortfalls in revenue generated by counties, it is important that counties think outside the box to ensure that they are able to raise maximum revenues from their streams.
Being able to generate adequate revenue would insulate counties from adverse effects of delays in the disbursement of funds by the National Treasury.
Counties should roll out proper measures to be able to improve local revenue collection. By meeting targets, devolved units would be able to be self-sustaining to meet local expenditures.
Counties can no longer continue depending on shareable revenue and there is need for them to come up with measures to improve own revenue collection to ensure services are not disrupted when Treasury delays money.
When counties record positive improvements on generation of their own revenues the funds can be spent on development projects while allocations from shareable revenue will go into key infrastructural projects.
For instance, at the moment, no county is receiving money for development because of the impasse we witnessed in the Senate.
I know some counties like Kakamega have taken some measures that will help us to move forward since there is no development money being released to counties at the moment.
It is laudable to note that some counties have been able to embrace cashless systems on revenue collection to seal loopholes and boost collection.
The Kakamega governor Spoke to The Star.