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"content": "the national revenue at the county level and so on. Therefore, the reduction of disparities by using this money allocated to the Equalisation Fund in a targeted manner is extremely important. I hope that we, in the Senate, will be in a position to intervene at that level and make sure that things are done properly. The problem is that even the line of intervention by the Senate is not very clear. My proposal is that even if this first experience has not been that optimum, in future, as we begin to prepare for the next budget, the Senate should be involved in the process of budget making at the county level much earlier. It is important that as we structure the interaction between the Senate and county assemblies, since in our Standing Orders, Senators have the right and the obligation to address county assemblies every now and again--- This is one of the discussions that I think we should have with our county assemblies in the process of budget making, so that in the next budget, the counties will be better informed. Madam Temporary Speaker, in this past experience, again, let me talk about something which was a general tendency. Budgets in the counties were originating from the executive. The executive thought out what the budget was and handed it to the county assemblies. I am not quite sure whether the county assemblies were very well prepared to discuss these budgets. Under the new Constitution, budget making is something which should be more the responsibility of the legislature than the executive. The executive proposes, but the legislature allocates to the executive. If the process begins by overly being dominated by the executive, and then the legislature is given a very short time to interrogate it, the issue of accountability of the executive to the legislature on this budget becomes a problem. Madam Temporary Speaker, I think the mistake that has been done this time, because of problems of time and so on, should not be repeated in future. The budget making capacity of county assemblies must, definitely be built. The oversight role of county assemblies over the executive must definitely be developed. At the moment, I am afraid that just reading generally in the newspapers and seeing what is going on, it does not look, to me, as if the county governments emerge as a government established with two branches; one, the legislature, which is the county assembly; and the other one is the executive, which is the governor’s team. At the moment, there seems to be an over focus on the executive at the county and, rather a diminished attention on the county assemblies. This will be a disaster because the county assembly is where the representatives of the people at the local level congregate to debate on the policies and, therefore, the development of the county. The governor and his or her team are there to propose his or her programmes and to be approved and be given mandate by the county assembly in a manner that makes sense of being represented by a parliamentary democracy. Now one last thing, Madam Temporary Speaker, which is extremely important, is that county governments should not devolve bad manners of the national Government to the local level. You saw recently that Kenya was rated the fourth most corrupt country in The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposes only. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor, Senate."
}