Utility property.

Under existing law, the Public Utilities Commission has regulatory authority over public utilities and can establish its own procedures, subject to statutory limitations or directions and constitutional requirements of due process. The existing Public Utilities Act prohibits, with certain exemptions, any public utility other than a common carrier by railroad, from selling, leasing, assigning, mortgaging, or otherwise disposing of or encumbering the whole or any part of specified property necessary or useful in the performance of the public utility's duties to the public, without first having either secured an order from the commission authorizing it to do so for qualified transactions…