County governments could soon be barred or restricted from hiring external law firms to represent them in court in a new bid currently in the Senate.
The development came amid revelations the devolved units have accumulated pending bills of more than Sh56 billion in legal fees alone, with Nairobi leading with more than Sh21 billion.
This is despite the counties having established legal departments, complete with staff led by county attorneys.
The Senate Justice, Legal Affairs and Human Rights Committee and Devolution and Intergovernmental Relations Committee are considering a petition seeking to bar counties from hiring lawyers.
Grassroot Civilian Oversight Initiative executive director Laban Omusundi petitioned the House to pass legislation to stop governors from outsourcing legal services.
He wants the Senate to come up with a legal framework to prevent loss of money in legal fees.
“There are county attorneys established in line with the County Government Act, 2012, Section 43, well facilitated by taxpayers money to execute that mandate of representing county governments in legal matters,” Omusundi said.
Members of the joint committees backed the petition, saying many county officers use legal fees as an avenue to steal public funds.
Kisii Senator Richard Onyonka wondered why counties were hiring external lawyers, yet they have county attorneys.
“What is even worrying is that most of these cases have been set up to pilfer county funds. We must stop this and make sure our counties are not dens of corruption,” he said.
The lawmaker said there is need for a ‘constitutional’ engagement that protects both parties from exploitation and theft of public money.
Siaya Senator Oburu Oginga said the habit of hiring external lawyers has been an avenue of pilfering public funds in counties and government parastatals.
He said the Senate needs to come up with "serious" mitigating measures to protect counties from losing money.
Nominated Senator Catherine Mumma urged the Senate to establish whether counties were getting value for money by engaging external advocates.
She wants Controller of Budget Margaret Nyakang’o to give a breakdown of funds spent in paying external advocates for each county.
Marsabit Senator Mohamed Chute said, “There is a need to look into ways of managing counties to ensure they do not use millions of shillings to pay for legal services, yet they could use the county lawyers to offer similar services.”
Omusundi told the senators the petition was motivated by the Controller of Budget's annual reports on expenditures of county governments.
The petitioner said some of the cases counties are facing are informed by deliberate administrative decisions.
Omusundi sought measures to deter deliberate erroneous administrative decisions that will make sure everybody is held personally responsible for his or her administrative decisions.
“My efforts to raise this matter for its justification with the Controller of Budget and Attorney General bore no fruits for there was no response to that effect,” he said.