County cash blocked over shoddy budgets

The National Treasury is withholding Sh7.8 billion for 21 counties which have failed to draw up proper budgets.

Some of the counties presented budgets full of pipe dreams about the money they expected to make, or had big holes because of wanting to live beyond their means.

The affected counties will automatically forfeit 50 per cent of their proposed project budgets for the month of October because the Treasury will only release half of their budget requests after they failed to meet a revision deadline which expired on September 30.

The government released Sh16.4 billion to all counties for the months of August and September but withheld part of last month’s allocation after some counties violated budgetary approval procedures.

Only Kitui, Tana River, Nyeri, Nairobi, Nandi, Kakamega, Kirinyaga and Kericho counties have provided fully balanced budgets and are qualified to access their budgetary allocation in full. That means that the other 39 have only partially complied. Out of these, 21 are lagging further behind.

The Controller of Budget, Mrs Agnes Odhiambo, told a press conference in her office on Wednesday that the constraints some counties faced in meeting the set standards included failure to pass the county governments Finance Bills.

Mrs Odhiambo said that some of the counties yet to pass their Finance Bills were not supposed to be collecting revenues because they would be doing so illegally.

She also said that her office had approved the release of Sh28.4 billion from the County Revenue Funds to the county governments that had successfully passed their relevant Finance Bills.

“The review we conducted in July established that only eight counties had balanced budgets,” she said. “Some of the counties had huge deficits in their budgets without explanations on funding while others provided for unrealistic revenue targets without indicating the sources.”

Mrs Odhiambo said that by October 15, only 17 counties had revised their budgets and submitted them to her office while nine had finished revisions and had submitted them to county assemblies for debate. Thirteen counties were still revising their budgets while 22 are yet to supply their revised budgets to her office.

She also revealed that a resolution agreed on during the first Intergovernmental Budget and Economic Council (IBEC) meeting chaired by Deputy President William Ruto, which required that counties with unbalanced budgets revise them, has been violated by some counties.

“Further in a meeting for County Executives in charge of Finance and honourable speakers of the county assemblies held on September 11, 2013 at Hilton Hotel, it was further resolved that the county budgets that did not meet the requirements would be revised by September 30.”

The second meeting also agreed that only the money for August from the national sharable allocation to the counties would be released without revision of county budgets.

It was also resolved that any subsequent release of funds would depend on whether a country had revised its budget and the same approved by the county assemblies.

Members of County Assemblies in various regions have been boycotting work to demand better pay. The boycott has delayed the passing of Finance Bills.

Another consultative meeting held at the Serena last month resolved that the September 30 budget revision deadline should not be extended and that only counties which had achieved full compliance with the allocation requirement will be fully funded.

She said that some counties were already feeling the heat with Mombasa named as one of those facing problems in delivery of services because it cannot access the funds fully.

In the Mombasa case, an election petition against Governor Ali Hassan Joho is still pending in the Court of Appeal, further compounding the challenges facing the county.

On Tuesday Makueni County, which has been facing a budget crisis due to a disagreement between Governor Kivutha Kibwana and the members of the County Assembly, finally resolved the dispute.

At a meeting held at Mrs Odhiambo’s office, Prof Kivutha and members of the assembly agreed to resolve a budget dispute on personal emoluments for the representatives which the governor had opposed. In the end, it was agreed that emoluments be allocated Sh577.5 million, down from the Sh975 million proposed initially. Prof Kibwana had threatened to resign over the impasse.

Wrangles between the county executives and the county assemblies, the ongoing go-slow by MCAs and the delay by the government to provide details of projects to be funded by the donors have been cited among the challenges facing the regional governments.

The Nation on Wednesday established that Mombasa, Kilifi, Lamu, Taita Taveta and Lamu are among counties that are yet to pass their Finance Bills.

In Mombasa, the Sh21 billion Bill was debated but rejected over complaints that it had a Sh9 billion deficit that could be avoided.

In the western Kenya region, only Kisumu, Busia, Homa Bay and Kericho have met the deadline for passing the Bill that allows county government collect revenue.

Yesterday, Migori governor Okoth Obado, whose county was not listed among those that had completed all the processes, said his county had all its allocation without a hitch. “I am wondering why Migori is not in the list (of eight),” said.

Additional reporting by Moses Ogada,Mazera Ndurya,James Ngunjiri,and Gitonga Marete.