How the Senate Oversees Counties, and Where That Oversight Stops

The Senate exists for the counties. That is not a description of its politics. It is a description of its constitutional job.

Article 96 says the Senate represents the counties and serves to protect the interests of the counties and their governments. Everything the Senate does with counties runs from that clause, and so does the limit on what it can do.

The four things the Senate actually does for counties

It decides how national revenue is shared among counties. Parliament passes two separate bills in each cycle. One divides revenue between the national government and the counties as a whole. The other divides the counties' share among the 47. The Commission on Revenue Allocation recommends the basis for that division, and the Senate has the decisive role in the county-by-county allocation. The amounts change every cycle and are set in legislation, so the only current answer is the current act.

It considers bills concerning counties. A bill that affects the functions or the finances of county governments goes through the Senate, not only the National Assembly. Which bills qualify is itself a recurring dispute between the two houses.

It oversees national revenue allocated to counties. Senate committees summon governors and county officers, examine the Auditor-General's reports on counties, and question spending. This is the visible half of Senate oversight and the half that makes news.

It determines the removal of a Governor. A county assembly initiates the process and the Senate determines it, sitting as a whole house or through a special committee. What that looks like in practice is in how a Governor is impeached, and the record is in the impeachments since devolution began.

Where the Senate's oversight stops

At the county assembly's door, and this is the part most people get wrong.

The Senate oversees national revenue allocated to county governments. It does not run a county. It cannot direct a department to build anything, cannot cancel a contract, cannot dismiss a county officer and cannot remove a county executive committee member. That last one belongs to the county assembly alone, and the process is in how an assembly removes a county executive member.

The Senate does not audit. The Auditor-General audits. A Senate committee examines an audit report that already exists. It does not produce one.

A summons is not a sanction either. A committee can call a Governor, take evidence and write a damning report. Whatever follows depends on other institutions: the Director of Public Prosecutions, the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission, the courts, or the county assembly.

And the Senate's writ runs to money that came from the national share. Own-source revenue a county raises itself is accounted for through the county assembly and the Auditor-General. The money a county raises for itself explains what falls into that category.

Why the Senate and the counties keep colliding

Two bodies claim to speak for counties.

The Senate represents counties inside Parliament. The Council of Governors represents county executives. When the Senate summons a Governor, one body with a claim to speak for counties is calling another to account, and the argument over whether that is oversight or interference has been running for as long as devolution has existed. The fight between the Council of Governors and the Senate takes that argument apart.

The dispute is not decorative. It shapes how the equitable share is agreed, how quickly money is disbursed, and what happens to a county assembly that cannot get its own executive to answer a question.

What to do with a Senate committee report

Read it, then follow it to the county assembly.

Senate committee reports on counties are public. They contain the specific audit queries, the departmental responses and the recommendations. The useful step is to take a recommendation about your county to the county assembly's public accounts committee and ask what it did with the same query, because that is where any action has to happen.

Your Senator is elected by the whole county and is your route into that process. Before 10 August 2027, ask any Senate candidate three concrete things: which committee they sat on or would seek, what they did about the last audit report on this county, and how they voted on the county allocation legislation. All three have documented answers, and the documents are public.