Topeka ? A group of large Kansas industries wants state regulators to sanction Western Resources for refusing to comply with a request to turn over documents it was ordered to provide.

Kansas Industrial Customers, a group that includes Farmland Industries and Boeing, requested the sanction in a motion filed Wednesday.

“Western has willfully and completely refused to comply with the commission’s order on discovery as it relates to KIC data requests,” Jim Zakoura, the group’s Overland Park attorney, said in the motion.

Zakoura is seeking documents prepared by Western consultants in support of its plan to split-off its unregulated businesses from its regulated utilities. He also wants internal reports concerning the company’s decision to write-off about $654 million in the first quarter of 2002 to comply with accounting changes ordered by the federal Securities and Exchange Commission.

Zakoura said he needs the information to formulate a position on Western’s corporate restructuring plan before a scheduled Kansas Corporation Commission hearing on May 31.

“We’re keeping an open mind,” Zakoura said. “But we don’t have enough information to decide at this point.”

David Wittig, Western’s chairman, president and chief executive officer, has said the proposal in question could generate up to $1 billion from the sale of stock in a new subsidiary to pay down the debt of the parent company, which according to the KCC now stands at $3.52 billion.

Consumer advocates and other critics maintain that the restructuring plan is little different from one blocked last summer by the KCC because of concerns that it would leave the utility operations saddled with too much of the company’s debt.

KCC spokeswoman Rosemary Foreman declined to speculate about how the commission would respond to the industry group’s request, but she said it is important that Western comply with the discovery order.

“We will take this motion very seriously,” she said.