Law reform has to ensure counties benefit from wealth in the locality

Beyond obsession with expansion of the executive structure to accommodate more eating chiefs, the Building Bridges Initiative would have more impact if it moved to solve some of our really fundamental governance issues.

Devolution is one of them. The present ruckus over the disbursement and sharing of devolved funds exposes a fundamental flaw in the architecture.

Even if the tugs-of-war between county governments and the centre and between the Senate and the National Assembly were resolved, those will be elastoplast solutions, which will not prevent another rupture next year or the year after.

A permanent fix requires a clear and simple formula, not loose laws and regulations open to varied interpretations.

Beyond that, however, we must also radically change the philosophical underpinnings of devolution.

Right now, we have a system where theoretically semi-autonomous governments depend for their survival on cash disbursements from the national government.

INDEPENDENCE

Even where the amount to be given out is established by law, they must still forever hold out the begging bowl or agitate for their rightful share.

We now have to think of a devolved system where county governments can survive and thrive independent of cash from the National Treasury.

This simply means that the devolved units must be able to sustain themselves on their own homegrown resources.

This is not as ridiculous as it might seem. We have never heard of the Governors of California, Texas, Alaska or New Jersey in the United States, for instance, begging Congress or the White House for funds.

All the 50 American states finance nearly 100 per cent of their own budgets through local taxes.

The US has a well-defined code on State and Federal taxes, where each unit collects its revenues and applies them accordingly.

REVENUE COLLECTION

It actually makes nonsense of devolution for the Kenya Revenue Authority to collect taxes and then have the National Treasury send some of that loot to the counties where it was collected.

Therefore, what we need is a system where counties will collect and keep their own taxes in an expanded system beyond the petty market fees, trading licences, parking fees and other taxes and levies they currently control.

Of course such a system will only work where we have responsible and properly managed county governments that will use revenues for the intended purposes and will not tax enterprises out of business.

Such a system would go together with a regime where the bulk of the wealth developed within a country, including natural resources, must belong to that county.

Just the other day, when President Uhuru Kenyatta launched Kenya’s first export on our mythical journey to the world of oil riches, we heard governor after governor begging for his piece of the ‘goat’.

REVENUE SHARING

The governor of Turkana, where the oilfields are located, wanted to be left with a leg. The governor of neighbouring West Pokot wanted the ribs. Another wanted the neck; another the liver, and so on.

The point is that all those governors would not be begging the President for their cut if there were clear rules on revenue sharing.

And if we recognise that it is Turkana oil rather than State House oil, then the governor of Turkana should be the one addressed.

Indeed, the State can play the role of facilitator and neutral arbiter, but real devolution demands that the oil belongs to the place it originates from, just like how our coffee, tea and other major resources enrich their places of origin.

For that to happen, we need proper policies rather than be reduced to begging for favours.

We also need to see made public all the agreements signed with the oil explorers and associated entities.

TRANSPARENCY

That applies to oil as it does to titanium exploitation in Kwale, standard gauge railway financing, construction of the Lamu port and related infrastructure, the Lamu coal power plant and every other contract signed on our behalf.

As long as those contracts remain closely-guarded secrets known to only a few, we can only assume that there is something to hide; that a few people in power and authority are ‘eating’ our wealth.

Secrecy ensures that we will never know if the people of Turkana or Kwale are getting a fair deal for their oil or titanium, respectively, or if Kenya, generally, is benefiting beyond the stomachs of those in power.

A revised Constitution must ensure no such contracts signed in our collective name remain secret.

We don’t ever want to see another Mobitelea scandal, where denizens of the Moi regime bit a substantial bit of Safaricom for themselves.

[email protected] @MachariaGaitho