County Governments will publish in the Kenya Gazette, 1,400 legislation passed by Assemblies in the past four years, which is in conformity with a High court order.
The resolution was arrived at after a meeting between stakeholders, which also agreed that the Government Press prescribes an appropriate format in terms of numbering for the publication of County Legislation after discussing with the Attorney General, Githu Muigai and that it immediately publishes all County laws in line with Article 99 of the Constitution.
They also resolved that the Ministry of Interior Affairs and the Attorney General’s Office have no supervisory role over publication of county legislations, thus consent from them is not required, which also applies to other agents of the National Government while counties are only required to provide an authentic velum.
The meeting was held between Council of Governors, Government Press, County Assemblies Forum, Intergovernmental Relations Technical Committee, Society of Clerks at the Table(SOCATT), Office of Controller of Budget.
“Counties are to bear the cost of re-publishing previous county legislation in the form prescribed by the Government Press. To minimize the cost of publication, the Government Press can publish County Legislation in PDF format after ensuring that the legislation is in the prescribed format. For republication, Counties to provide the Government Press with both hard and soft copies of previous legislation,” the meeting agreed.
A statement from Council of Governors indicated that until any amendments are made to Section 25 of the County Governments Act, Counties should comply with the requirement for publication in both the National and County Gazette.
“It is upon the Counties to ensure due diligence to ascertain that the legislation published by the Government Press has not been altered in the process of publication,” the statement indicated.
And for the purpose of County Appropriation Bills and Acts, counties are to submit hard copies of the published legislation as proof of publication, to the Office of the Controller of Budget for funds to be released to them.
Similarly, they called for the fast tracking in establishing an online repository for county legislation in order to make the various county legislations available to the public and other interested parties such as the Office of the Controller of Budget.
On the status of counties’ assets and liabilities, the CoG indicated that Transition Authority effected the transfer through legal notice No. 33 of 28th February, 2013.
