Revenue agency step to control spending illegal, MCAs tell court

County assembly members have gone to court to challenge the decision by the Commission on Revenue Allocation (CRA) to control their budgets.

In a petition filed on Thursday, the MCAs want High Court to nullify the CRA directive, saying the caps on their expenditure plan lacks a legal basis.

“The 1st (CRA) and 2nd Respondents (Controller of budgets) not only lack any authority to impose ceilings on allocations in Counties’ Budgets, but also have no legal or moral authority to “approve” Counties Budgets,” say the speakers in their application.

The MCAs claim the decision to limit the spending amounts to legislating for the counties, which they say is unconstitutional.

Justice Isaac Lenaola Thursday certified the case as urgent and set a hearing for this morning.

The caps were imposed after statutory reports revealed that MCAs had spent Sh2 billion, some of which had little to do with their mandate.

The public finance watchdogs also set the maximum funds to be allowed for foreign travel. MCAs have been on the spot for spending a lot of money on foreign travel, funds that critics say could go to county development.

The county representatives also have been accused of arm-twisting governors to allocate more resources to them. MCA in their application lists the speakers of all the 47 counties as petitioners while CRA, Controller of Budget and the Attorney General are respondents.

CRA sent circulars to all counties in April on spending limits.

The Controller of Budget has written to counties demanding that all allocations for assemblies comply with the CRA directive. The controller threatened not to approve withdrawals by county governments should they ignore the directive.

The mandate of the CRA is limited to recommending equitable sharing of revenue, the MCAs have said, adding the budget controller only oversees the implementation of the budgets by authorising withdrawals.

They say the county budgets were approved and Appropriation Bills passed.

“The circulars are therefore not only patently illegal, but are also inordinately overtaken by events,” says Abdikadir Sheikh, Mandera County assembly speaker, in an affidavit.