20 Key Questions About Your County Budget A Citizens’ Tool for Reading and Understanding County Budgets. Prepared by the Commission for the Implementation of the Constitution and International Budget Partnership -IBP The 2014/15 county budget process was plagued by many challenges, but most counties managed to produce Fiscal Strategy Papers for the first time, and many based their budgets in part on these papers. Moreover, as required by the Public Finance Management Act 2012, many counties shifted to programme-based budgeting this year. As counties finalize their budgets, it is time to start analyzing them. In order to help citizens and organizations at county level engage with their budgets, we have revised and expanded our “16 Key Questions” tool from last year to include 20 questions. This was motivated particularly by a need to provide additional guidance when reading programme-based budgets (PBB), which are very different from the traditional line-item budgets Kenyans are used to. While most counties will have made the transition to PBB this year, the core questions remain the same and the 16 Question version of the tool is also still available (as are a number of examples of how it has been used). While we encourage citizens and county assembly members to use the 20 Key Questions to evaluate their budgets, we also encourage them to continue to monitor budget implementation as well, since budget proposals and enacted budgets are just the beginning of the cycle. KEY QUESTIONS 1. Are there reasons given for choices my leaders made in the budget? 2. Does the budget contain a summary table allowing easy comparison of total proposed spending for all ministries/departments? 3. What are the priority areas in my budget? 4. Does the budget have programmes, sub-programmes and further disaggregation of government spending below the sub-programme level? 5. Are there indicators and targets for all the programmes and sub-programmes? 6. Does the budget contain detailed information about staff costs, including the salaries and benefits of workers by ministry, and ideally, by job class, group, or individual positions? 7. Does the budget have the same priorities as my county’s development plan? 8. Is there enough money in my budget to maintain the current level of basic services like health? 9. Does my budget tell me where (that is, in which ward or sub-county) development projects will be located? 10. Does the budget contain any funds for civic education, or to facilitate public participation in county decision-making? 11. Does my budget have a deficit and how will it be paid for? 12. How much money does my county say it will raise from its own taxes and fees and is that reasonable? 13. Did my county table a cash flow projection with the budget showing how much it expects to take in by month, and how much it expects to spend by month? 14. How much money does my county expect to get from national government? 15. Does my budget spend money on things that counties are responsible for rather than things the national government is responsible for and are there any areas that counties are responsible for that are missing from the budget? 16. Does my budget have an emergency fund in case of any disaster? 17. Does the budget properly distinguish between recurrent and development expenditure? 18. Does the budget contain unit costs for various purchases (such as vehicles, generators and other assets) and are these consistent across departments? 19. Are the budget lines sufficiently clear to know what each of them refers to, and are they consistent across departments? 20. Does the budget contain estimates for the coming three years or only for this year?
Posted on: Thu, 31 Jul 2014 13:46:56 +0000
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