Senate leader of Majority Kipchumba Murkomen alongside senators, on Thursday, September 5, ate humble pie in the protracted county revenue allocation row.
The Senate accepted the Ksh316 billion allocation for counties proposed in the revised 2019 Division of Revenue Bill in what Murkomen described as a 'painful decision'.
The Senate and the Council of Governors (CoG) have been insistent on demanding Ksh335 billion allocated to the counties, an impasse that has been paralysing operations in the counties.
Speaking to the press Murkomen and his Minority counterpart James Orengo, however, vowed to sustain their petition challenging the Appropriation Act (2019).
"The Senate following a meeting held on September 5, has made the painful but patriotic decision to advise our negotiators at the ongoing mediation process to agree on the allocation of Ksh316.5 billion as the equitable share nationally raised revenue to be allocated to the counties," declared Murkomen.
A week earlier on August 29, CoG chairman Wycliffe Oparanya warned that counties would have to shut down operations on September 16, 2019, if the matter would not have been resolved by then.
“As you all know, the matter is not in our court as Governors, it is being resolved by the two Houses. We hope that they can resolve the matter expeditiously to ease the suffering that is in the counties."
“Beyond this date, if the matter is not resolved then we have resolved that county governments will have no option but to shut down,” Oparanya is quoted in the Business Daily.
On July 18, Senators, later joined by Governor marched to Milimani Law courts protesting 20 bills passed without the Senate’s involvement among them included the Division of Revenue Bill 2019.
This was after the older version of the bill, which had Ksh310 billion for counties, flopped at the mediation level of the National Assembly and Senate after the two Houses failed to agree on what the counties should get.
The National Assembly agreed to revise the allocation from an earlier Ksh310 billion after the Senate and Council of Governor’s demanded for Ksh335 billion, a benchmark set by Controller of Budget and Commission on Revenue Allocation.
Initially, President Uhuru Kenyatta had told off governors stating that the National government had no money to give to the counties and that they should work with what is available.
Uhuru, who broke his long silence over the matter at a funeral in Murang’a, saying “There are no funds to support the additional Ksh19 billion that the governors want.”
“I want to tell the governors and those agitating for the increase of allocation to counties that they should work with what they have. That is all that is there. The Government does not print money; we have to work with what we have,” he added.
