Ten Questions to Ask Your MCA About the County Budget
Take these to your MCA, in order, and write the answers down. Ten questions, all answerable from public documents, none of them requiring an argument.
An MCA who can answer most of them is doing the job. One who cannot answer any of them has told you something useful well before 10 August 2027.
The four questions about this year's budget
1. Which committees do you sit on, and were you in the room for the budget report? Committee membership decides what a member can actually influence. A member of the budget and appropriations committee saw the estimates in detail. A member on none of the sectoral committees relevant to this ward has a narrower answer, and that is worth knowing before you judge the rest.
2. What did this ward get in the current appropriation act, line by line? Not a total, and not a promise. A line item names a project, a department and an amount. If the answer is a story rather than a list, ask for the page number.
3. Was each of those items in the annual development plan and in the county integrated development plan? Projects are supposed to come out of the plan. Anything funded that never appeared in a plan arrived by another route, and the route is the question. The county's five-year plan explains where to look.
4. When and where was the public participation for this budget held, and what report came out of it? There should be a schedule, an attendance record and a report on how submissions were treated. The participation duty explains what a real one looks like.
The three questions about last year
5. What is the difference between what was approved for this ward and what was actually spent? Budgets are approved. Money is then released against them by the Controller of Budget. The two figures are rarely identical, and the gap is where the real story usually sits.
6. What did the Auditor-General find about this county, and has the assembly debated the report? The report is public. The county assembly is required by the Constitution to debate and consider it and take appropriate action within the period allowed. An assembly that received an audit report and never debated it has made a decision, whatever it says about the matter.
7. Which projects in this ward are incomplete, and what is holding each one up? Ask for the specific obstacle: procurement, a contractor dispute, a pending bill, a land question, or money that never arrived. Each of those has a different fix and a different person responsible for it.
The three questions about the money itself
8. What did the county project in own-source revenue, and what did it actually collect? A budget built on revenue that does not arrive produces stalled projects everywhere, not only in one ward. The money a county raises for itself sets out where county money comes from.
9. What share of the county budget goes to salaries and operations, and what share to development? The Public Finance Management Act sets a medium-term floor for development spending and the regulations cap the wage bill. Ask for the county's current position against both, rather than for a figure somebody used at a rally.
10. How did you vote, and where is it recorded? Every vote in a county assembly is in the Hansard. So are questions asked, statements sought and motions moved. A member's record exists in writing whether or not anybody reads it.
What to do with the answers
Check them, then publish them.
The clerk of the county assembly holds the order papers, the Hansard and the adopted committee reports. The county treasury holds the estimates and the appropriation act. The Auditor-General's reports are public. The budget process explains which document answers which question, so you are not sent round in circles.
Then share what you found in your ward, in writing, with the document references attached. A comparison anyone can check is far more persuasive than an accusation nobody can.
And ask the same ten of every challenger. A candidate who wants the seat should be able to say what the current ward allocation is, what is stalled and what they would do differently, with the same references. Anyone who cannot is applying for a job whose description they have not read. Related: what the job of an MCA actually is and the assembly's working year.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where can I get my county's budget documents?
The county treasury holds the budget estimates, the appropriation act and the county finance act, and the clerk of the county assembly holds the order papers, the Hansard and adopted committee reports. Many counties also publish these on their websites. All of them are public documents and a written request to the clerk is the most reliable route when a website is out of date.
What should I do if my MCA cannot answer these questions?
Go to the documents directly and to the assembly committee that shadows the department concerned. You can also petition the county assembly, which is required to consider a petition and report back. Keep a written record of what you asked and when, because a documented sequence of unanswered requests is far stronger material than a general complaint.
Can an ordinary resident get the Auditor-General's report on a county?
Yes. Reports of the Auditor-General are public documents and are laid before the relevant assembly, which is required to debate and consider them. The county assembly's public accounts committee examines the queries in detail, and its adopted report is also public. Both together show what was found and what, if anything, the assembly did about it.