16 years after Kenya adopted a Constitution designed to take power and public services closer to citizens, county governments are confronting an uncomfortable question: are governors managing the money and powers entrusted to them well enough to deliver the promise of devolution?
The question has become more urgent as workers in at least 21 counties have gone without salaries for up to two months, leaving thousands of families struggling to meet basic expenses, including school fees, at a time when the new academic term is beginning.
The immediate explanation is largely administrative: delayed budgets, disputes between county assemblies and executives, and requirements imposed by the Controller of Budget before counties can access their funds, but the salary crisis is exposing deeper weaknesses that have troubled devolved governments for years, including high wage bills, mounting pending bills, weak financial controls and expenditure repeatedly questioned by auditors.
For the 2026/27 financial year, Parliament approved Ksh428 billion as the equitable share for the 47 counties, with additional allocations taking the total resources available to devolved governments higher.
Governors have consistently argued that counties need more money and that delays in national transfers undermine their ability to deliver services. There is substance to that argument: Article 219 of the Constitution requires the county share of nationally raised revenue to be transferred without undue delay.
But the current crisis is harder to explain entirely through delays in Nairobi.
The National Treasury says it has released the equitable-share allocations due to counties through August, while some governors acknowledge that money has reached county accounts but cannot be accessed because budget requirements have not been completed.
Migori Governor Ochillo Ayacko said some counties had received their allocations but were unable to use them.
“We have received money for July and money for August, but these monies lie idle in our Central Bank account,” he said.
That explanation shifts part of the responsibility back to county governments, because receiving money is only one stage of the public-finance process; counties must also prepare and approve lawful budgets and meet the requirements for withdrawals.
The audit trail
The Auditor-General’s reports suggest the current salary crisis should not be viewed as an isolated administrative problem.
In 2023/24, county governments spent about Ksh208 billion on personnel emoluments, equivalent to roughly 45 per cent of their revenue and above the statutory 35 per cent ceiling. At the same time, counties reported Ksh226.61 billion in pending bills, leaving many administrations carrying substantial financial obligations into subsequent financial years.
The figures reveal a structural problem because salaries are permanent obligations while pending bills consume future budgets, leaving less room for development and essential services.
The situation differs considerably between counties, but the overall trend has raised questions about whether some devolved governments have expanded their recurrent commitments faster than their revenues can support.
In Kisii, for example, personnel expenditure reached 68 per cent of revenue in 2023/24, while Taita-Taveta spent 66 per cent, according to the Auditor-General’s report. Such figures do not by themselves demonstrate wrongdoing, but they indicate the difficult choices governors and county assemblies must confront when a growing share of public money is absorbed by the cost of running government.
The question is increasingly whether counties are financing government at the expense of the services government exists to provide.
The pending-bill trap
Pending bills offer another window into the problem because they transform past spending decisions into present financial obligations.
When counties contract work without adequate budgetary provision, the resulting debts do not disappear when the financial year ends; they are carried forward, often leaving new administrations to negotiate liabilities accumulated by their predecessors.
Bungoma provides a recent example.
The Senate County Public Accounts Committee questioned Governor Kenneth Lusaka over the county’s 2024/25 accounts after the Auditor-General reported Ksh1.7 billion in salary arrears and Ksh549 million in unremitted pension and other statutory deductions as of June 2025.
Lusaka told senators that the salary arrears had since been settled, while attributing the unremitted deductions to the previous administration.
“Those who failed to remit deducted salaries must be pursued and prosecuted,” he said.
His response highlights one of the central difficulties in county accountability: governors can legitimately inherit financial problems, but once elected they also inherit responsibility for putting systems in place to prevent the same failures from recurring.
When spending becomes a political question
Audit scrutiny becomes more politically sensitive when counties facing financial pressure spend money on items that appear difficult to justify.
In Vihiga, senators questioned Ksh5 million spent by the county executive on activities connected to a housewarming ceremony at the county assembly speaker’s residence while the county had about Ksh1.7 billion in pending bills.
The Senate committee directed Governor Wilbur Ottichilo to take action and, if necessary, recover the money.
“You must go back and deal with this illegality. If need be, recover the money,” committee chairman Moses Kajwang’ told him.
The episode does not establish that the governor personally benefited from the expenditure, but it demonstrates why the debate about county finances goes beyond whether Treasury has released money: when resources are scarce, the priorities chosen by county leaders inevitably become an accountability issue.
EACC’s corruption warning
Corruption adds another layer to the debate, although allegations must be distinguished carefully from proven wrongdoing.
The Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission’s 2025 National Gender and Corruption Survey, conducted across all 47 counties, found that county health departments and hospitals were perceived by respondents as the county-government areas with the most widespread corruption, at 31.8 per cent.
Finance and economic planning followed at 6.3 per cent, enforcement and inspectorate at 6 per cent, the governor’s office at 5.7 per cent and county executive offices at 4 per cent.
The figures do not prove that governors are corrupt; they measure public perceptions and reported experiences, but another finding is significant because 98.6 per cent of respondents who said they paid bribes in 2025 did not report the incidents, suggesting that many citizens remain unconvinced that reporting corruption will lead to meaningful action.
That creates a challenge for county governments and oversight institutions alike, because financial controls and anti-corruption laws are only effective when violations are detected, investigated and followed by consequences.
Not every failure is corruption
It would nevertheless be misleading to describe every county financial problem as corruption.
Counties can lose resources through outright fraud, but they can also struggle because of poor planning, weak procurement, excessive wage bills, inadequate revenue collection, political interference or simple administrative failure.
The Auditor-General’s findings are therefore important even where there is no allegation of criminal conduct, because repeated audit queries can reveal weaknesses in the systems that govern public money.
Those weaknesses ultimately become political questions because governors head county executives, set priorities, defend budgets and appoint senior officials.
The constitutional test
The Constitution gives both counties and the national government responsibilities in the devolution bargain.
Article 175 requires county governments to have reliable sources of revenue to enable them to govern and deliver services effectively, while Article 207 establishes county Revenue Funds and Article 219 protects the timely transfer of counties’ share of nationally raised revenue.
At the same time, Article 174 sets out the objectives of devolution, including promoting the democratic and accountable exercise of power, giving people greater powers of self-government, promoting social and economic development, ensuring equitable sharing of resources and strengthening checks and balances.
That is the standard against which the experiment should ultimately be judged.
Treasury must provide counties with their lawful share predictably; the Controller of Budget must protect public funds; county assemblies must exercise genuine oversight; accounting officers must comply with financial law; and governors must provide political leadership over the administrations they lead.
The salary crisis shows what happens when that chain breaks.
Sixteen years later
Kenya’s devolution experiment has undoubtedly changed the country’s political landscape, bringing decision-making closer to citizens and giving counties control over substantial resources and important services.
But the financial weaknesses are increasingly difficult to dismiss as temporary growing pains.
Wage bills remain high, pending bills continue to burden county budgets, auditors repeatedly raise questions about financial management, EACC continues to document corruption concerns, and workers in more than 21 counties are waiting for salaries despite the substantial resources allocated to devolved governments.
Governors are right to demand predictable funding from Nairobi, but accountability cannot move in only one direction.
The more difficult question is what county governments are doing with the money once they receive it, whether their wage bills are sustainable, why debts continue to accumulate and whether citizens can trace public spending to better services.
Sixteen years after the Constitution created devolution, the measure of success is therefore not simply how much money reaches the counties.
It is whether that money produces the accountable, responsive and equitable government that Kenyans were promised.