The Council of Governors (CoG) is willing to withdraw a court case challenging its exclusion from utilisation of the Sh10.5 billion Road Maintenance Levy Fund (RMLF) if the National Treasury consults the 47 county governments.
Homa Bay Governor Gladys Wanga said this during a stakeholder engagement with the Budget and Appropriations Committee of the National Assembly on the County Governments Additional Allocation Bill (CGAAB) 2025.
She told the committee chaired by Alego Usonga MP Samuel Atandi that governors were willing to settle the matter outside court if possible since they went to seek an interpretation on how it should be implemented.
“The Council of Governors is willing to have this matter sorted out of court if possible and are willing to engage Members of National Assembly towards achieving this,” said Wanga.
Atandi pointed that the delays in passing the law, which is in violation of the Public Finance Management (PFM) Act, have affected construction of roads under the Kenya Rural Roads Authority (Kerra).
He said CoG needs to explore an out of court settlement because the roads that were being done by Kerra have stalled and the fast-tracking of this bill facilitating movement of funds to the counties.
The CGAAB, whose enactment has been delayed over the controversy over the control of the RMLF billions, seeks to unlock Sh50.5 billion as additional allocations- both conditional and unconditional- to the 47 county governments from development partners.
The CGAA Bill 2025 is a republication of the 2024 Bill that was lost at the mediation committee level of the National Assembly and Senate after they failed to arrive at a compromise Bill due to disagreements on the amount of money to be allocated to the counties.
The National Assembly had proposed allocation of Sh25.3 billion with the Senate lobbying for Sh50.5 billion, creating a notable gap that the mediation committee of the two Houses failed to reach a compromise.
A number of development partners have intimated of their inclination to channel their funding meant to help Kenyans elsewhere as politicians wrangle over control of RMLF.
While the Senate and CoG have been pushing to have the RMLF money channeled through the devolved units’ kitty to help in the construction of the county roads, MPs have raised objections causing an impasse on the Bill.
The Sh50.5 billion additional allocations includes Sh42 billion financed from the proceeds of loans and grants from development partners, Sh8.42 billion from the national government’s share of revenue and Sh116.1 million from court fines.
Kakamega Governor Fernandes Barasa who accompanied Wanga before the budget committee raised concern over the unnecessary delays in enacting the law saying it affects works on the development projects in the counties.
“The failure to pass this Bill has affected the counties absorption and budget implementation for the financial years to which the allocations are meant for with the loss of donor funds mostly being with programmes that are performance based,” said Barasa.
The CGAA law was first established during the 2021/22 financial year following a High Court ruling to have the additional allocations to the devolved units managed through a separate law from the Division of Revenue Act (Dora), which was left to handle equitable shareable revenue to counties.
Section 42 of the PFM Act provides that Parliament shall consider the Division of Revenue Bill, the County Allocation of Revenue Bill, and a County Governments Additional Allocations Bill not later than 30 days after the Bills have been introduced.
