Topeka — Western Resources has been ordered to hand over information about executives' salaries and flight logs for corporate jets to a state consumer agency battling the utility's proposed $151 million rate hike.
The Kansas Corporation Commission on Tuesday granted the Citizens' Utility Ratepayer Board's request for the documents. The ratepayer board is charged with protecting residential and small-business energy customers.
Western Resources, the parent company of utilities KGE and KPL, serves more than 600,000 Kansas electricity customers.
The company makes 11.1 percent profit on its $2.5 billion annual rate base. But the company wants to make 12.75 percent.
Western had objected to the documents' release, saying the information about the compensation of executives was not relevant to the rate case. The company said it wanted to restrict access to the flight records to protect "commercially sensitive" and "highly confidential" information.
The commission, however, ruled that executive compensation was "a fair area of inquiry" and said it did not find "a legitimate or reasonable basis for the proposed restrictions" of the flight logs.
Utility spokeswoman Kim Gronniger said Western officials would consider all options, including a possible appeal. She said the company already has complied with more than 1,450 data requests.
Niki Christopher, an attorney for the ratepayer board, said the agency wants the compensation records and aircraft logs to determine how much time company executives are spending on the business matters of Western's unregulated subsidiaries, specifically Protection One, its financially troubled monitored security subsidiary.
However, Gronniger said the flight logs for Western's two corporate jets would not provide the board with specific enough information to draw valid conclusions about how executives are dividing their time.
"Even if the log says they (executives) flew here on Protection One business and there on utility business, it won't reflect what business was discussed on the plane," Gronniger said. "It is not relevant. Not a single penny of the expenses for the leased aircraft is attributed to the utilities."
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