Three Kenyan governors are facing growing scrutiny over how their county governments are spending public money after new figures showed that a large share of county revenue is going towards salaries.
Homa Bay, Taita Taveta and Machakos counties have emerged among the counties with the highest wage-bill pressures in the country.
According to figures from the Salaries and Remuneration Commission (SRC), Taita Taveta and Homa Bay each spent 63 per cent of their ordinary revenue on personnel costs, while Machakos spent 58 per cent.
The figures put Governor Gladys Wanga of Homa Bay, Governor Andrew Mwadime of Taita Taveta and Governor Wavinya Ndeti of Machakos under renewed pressure to explain their spending priorities.
The law requires county governments to keep expenditure on personnel below 35 per cent of ordinary revenue.
This means Homa Bay and Taita Taveta exceeded the recommended limit by 28 percentage points, while Machakos was 23 percentage points above the threshold.
The high wage bills have raised concerns about how much money is left for development projects and essential services.
Counties are expected to invest in roads, hospitals, water projects, markets, sanitation and other programmes that directly benefit residents. However, when a large portion of available revenue is used to pay salaries, the amount available for such projects becomes smaller.
Homa Bay, for example, continues to face demands for better roads, improved healthcare, reliable water supply and other basic services. The high personnel expenditure has therefore created questions about whether the county is getting the right balance between paying workers and funding development.
The situation is not limited to the three counties. Across Kenya, county governments spent Ksh171.36 billion on salaries during the period covered by the SRC report.
This was an increase of Ksh16.42 billion compared with the Ksh154.94 billion spent during a similar period in the 2024/2025 financial year.
The increase shows that the cost of maintaining county administrations continues to rise.
While workers are necessary for the delivery of public services, especially in hospitals, offices and other county institutions, the growing wage bill presents a difficult challenge for county governments.
Every additional amount spent on salaries reduces the money available for other priorities unless the county is able to increase its revenue.
This is why the management of county payrolls has become an important issue in the debate about the success of devolution.
Interestingly, only four counties managed to keep their wage-bill-to-revenue ratios below the 35 per cent threshold during the first nine months of the 2025/2026 financial year.
They were Tana River, Kwale, Nakuru and Uasin Gishu.
The performance of these counties shows that it is possible to operate within the required limit, although counties have different populations, revenue bases and staffing needs.
It also raises questions about whether counties with much higher wage bills are doing enough to control recruitment, manage their payrolls and avoid unnecessary expenditure.
There was some improvement nationally, with the average ratio of personnel expenditure to revenue falling from 46.8 per cent to 44.12 per cent.
However, the improvement was mainly linked to increased revenue rather than a major reduction in salary expenditure.
This means that the underlying problem has not disappeared. If salaries continue to increase, counties could find themselves under even greater pressure when revenue growth slows.
The wider public service is also becoming more expensive. The number of public servants increased from about 884,700 in 2020 to 1.07 million in 2025. The growth has been partly linked to expansion in sectors such as education, health and security, as well as salary adjustments.
The national public service wage bill is projected to rise from Ksh1.247 trillion in the 2024/2025 financial year to Ksh1.287 trillion in 2025/2026.
For counties, the challenge is even more sensitive because residents expect to see the benefits of devolution in their daily lives.
People want functioning health facilities, better roads, clean water, modern markets and other services. They are also likely to question a county government when development projects remain incomplete while the payroll continues to grow.
The figures facing Homa Bay, Taita Taveta and Machakos therefore provide an important test for their county administrations.
Governors will have to demonstrate that the money being spent on employees is necessary and that their governments are getting value from the public workforce.
