# Generating Arkansas Jobs Act (GAJA) rider The Generating Arkansas Jobs Act rider is a cost-recovery mechanism — Entergy Arkansas's Rate Schedule No. 73 — that lets an Arkansas investor-owned utility recover the cost of new generation from its retail customers **outside a general rate case**, through an annually updated charge. It was created by the Generating Arkansas Jobs Act, Act 373 of the 2025 regular session (codified at Ark. Code Ann. § 23-4-1301 et seq.), signed by Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders on 2025-03-20. The rider recovers the utility's costs for "strategic investments" the Commission has designated as such, and — unusually — it allows a **return on Construction Work in Progress (CWIP)**: customers pay a return on generation plant while it is still being built, before it serves any load. ## How it appears in the corpus The corpus anchor is [[Entergy Arkansas]]'s [[GAJA Rider 2026 Annual Update]] ([[psc/docket-26-008-tf-2026-05-22/_overview|Docket 26-008-TF]]), which set the rider's 2026 amount at a **$110.4 million revenue requirement** — a return on $1.24 billion of CWIP for three new power plants ([[Ironwood]] and [[Jefferson Power Station|Jefferson]] gas plants, and [[Arkansas Cypress|Arkansas Cypress]] solar-and-battery). **The update was approved on 2026-06-04 by [[Order No. 7 Approving the GAJA Annual Update|Order No. 7]]** at a revised **$109,977,691** (Staff's $463K rate-of-return correction being the only reduction). The cost is allocated across the four standard retail rate classes by the Production Demand Allocation Factor — Residential 39.39% / $0.00574 per kWh (**$5.74/month** at 1,000 kWh), Small General Service 24.98% / $0.00686 per kWh, Large General Service 34.91% / $1.21 per kW, Lighting 0.72% ([[Revised GAJA Rider Rate Schedule 73]]) — and falls on all 738,836 retail customers. The rider operates on "[[Strategic Investment|strategic investments]]." Whether a separate Commission designation finding was required for [[Ironwood]] was the docket's contested question — tracked as [[T002 - Ironwood Strategic Investment Designation Requirement]], twice-dialecticized ([[D002 Synthesis]], [[D004 Synthesis]]), and **resolved 2026-06-04 by Order No. 7**: no prior designation finding is required for a § 23-4-1304(w) transition facility, and the order itself found Ironwood "qualifies as a strategic investment under Ark. Code Ann. § 23-4-1303(10)" (pp. 21–22). The order also rejected the [[Attorney General Testimony on the GAJA Rider|Attorney General's]] financing-cost recommendation on the ground that "Act 373 does not grant the Commission the authority" to direct EAL's capital structure (§ 23-4-1304(m)) — the Commission stating it "shares the concerns of Mr. Meyer" while holding the statute leaves it no lever (T002 status: `resolved-via-Order-No-7`). ### The statutory text The Act 373 enrolled bill was archived 2026-05-24 (primary public record, [Act 373 of 2025 enrolled bill](../../web%20archive/2026-05-24/arkleg.state.ar.us/act-373-of-2025.md)). Key provisions cited across the corpus: - **§ 23-4-1303(10)(A) — Strategic Investment definition (chapeau).** Requires APSC approval under one of four enumerated pathways (CECPN under § 23-3-201 et seq.; UFEEPA under § 23-18-501 et seq.; § 23-18-104 notice; or per se inclusion via (10)(B)), AND that the approval be FOR one of four enumerated purposes (economic development; reliability; nuclear license extension; dispatchable generation adequacy). Both conditions are conjunctive. See [[Strategic Investment]] for the full quoted text and analysis. - **§ 23-4-1304(f)(1).** "At the election of the investor-owned electric utility... strategic investments shall be recovered through the rider." - **§ 23-4-1304(w) — Pre-Act-373 transition.** A three-condition test for recovery eligibility: (1) costs not pre-included; (2) pre-Act application filed under one of four pathways; AND (3) Commission order entered after January 1, 2025 approving an application in the same four categories. **(w) is a recovery-eligibility test, not a Strategic Investment designation waiver** — see [[T002 - Ironwood Strategic Investment Designation Requirement]] for the load-bearing implications. - **§ 23-4-1304(x) — CIAC and "other form of payment".** The statutory base for [[T001 - CIAC Classification of Google Generation Payments|T001]] (the CIAC classification dispute on Google's SRC payments). ### Legislative passage (Tier 2, archived 2026-06-04) Act 373 originated as **SB 307**, sponsored by Sen. **Jonathan Dismang** (R, SD-018) and Rep. **Les Eaves** (R, HD-058). Its passage was not frictionless: the bill **failed its first Senate third-reading vote, 17-11, on 2025-03-05** (short of the 18 votes a majority of the 35-member Senate requires), then passed the Senate 23-9 on 2025-03-12 with the emergency clause adopted 27-1, and cleared the House 77-13 on 2025-03-18 ([SB 307 / Act 373 legislative record, Tier 2](../../web%20archive/2026-06-04/arkleg.state.ar.us/sb307-act-373-gaja-legislative-record.md)). The emergency clause made the cost-recovery mechanism effective immediately upon the Governor's 2025-03-20 signature. Sen. Dismang also sponsored [[Act 548 (2025)]] (the data-center sales-tax-exemption expansion) the same session — the same legislator behind both the statute that socializes the new-generation cost to all retail ratepayers and the statute that exempts the data centers' own electricity from sales tax. ### The 2026-04-29 hearing and post-hearing record The procedural record around the 2026-04-29 evidentiary hearing — captured in the [[psc/docket-26-008-tf-hearing-2026-05-22/_overview|26-008-TF hearing deep-dive production]] — clarifies what is and is not yet decided: - [[Palmer Rebuttal on Ironwood|J. David Palmer's rebuttal testimony]] (Doc. 68, 2026-04-20) is Entergy's substantive answer to Staff's Ironwood-exclusion recommendation. Palmer argues Act 373 § 23-4-1304(w) makes pre-Act CECPN applications (Ironwood's was filed 2024-11-01) eligible for rider recovery without a separate Commission finding, and that the Commission already recognized EAL's designation in Docket 25-049-TF Order No. 4 by directing bill-impact calculations. - [[Order No. 5 Pre-Hearing Issues]] (Doc. 69, 2026-04-21) directs parties to address two pre-hearing issues — rate-impact comparisons (Jan 2026 vs June 2026) and cost-of-debt reconciliation with the [[Entergy Arkansas]] Formula Rate Plan in Docket 16-036-FR. The Commission does not list the [[Ironwood]] strategic-investment question in its own pre-hearing issues. - The [[2026-04 APSC Evidentiary Hearing on the GAJA Rider|2026-04-29 evidentiary hearing]] produced a 301-page transcript filed by [[Veritext Court Reporting]] (Doc. 74, 2026-05-08). The transcript is **not online** — it is available only by in-person inspection at the Commission's offices or by paid Veritext copy (see [[Hearing Transcript Filing Notice]]). - [[Order No. 6 Legislative Council Report]] (Doc. 75, 2026-05-12) was the most recent order until Order No. 7 issued 2026-06-04 — see [[Order No. 7 Approving the GAJA Annual Update]]. **Order No. 6 is procedural** — directing EAL to provide a Legislative Council report by 2026-06-01 — and explicitly **did not** rule on either the Ironwood inclusion or the cost-of-debt dispute. Its "assuming Commission approval of the most recent Annual Update filing" framing indicated that a substantive approval order was contemplated but not yet issued; Order No. 7 is that order. The seal architecture of the docket is established by [[Order No. 2 Interim Protective Order]] (Doc. 4, 2026-02-11), which catalogs 22 categories of protectable information — Category I being "Information or documents containing the names of individual customers... terms of individual contracts, individual usage or individual prices" — the same legal authority under which [[GAJA Rider 2026 Annual Update|Filing Requirement 16]] (Non-CIAC Customer Payments) is sealed. ## Stakeholders [[Entergy Arkansas]] files the rider and earns the return on CWIP; the [[Arkansas Public Service Commission]] designates strategic investments and approves the rate; the [[APSC General Staff]] and the [[Office of the Arkansas Attorney General]] contest the amount; all retail customers pay it. ## Timeline - **2025-03-20** — the Generating Arkansas Jobs Act (Act 373 of 2025) is signed into law. - **2025-10-17** — the GAJA Rider is established by APSC Order No. 11 in Docket 25-049-TF. - **2026-03-06** — Entergy Arkansas files the 2026 Annual Update (Docket 26-008-TF), the corpus's anchor filing. - **2026-04-29** — the full Commission holds the public evidentiary hearing. - **2026-06-04** — [[Order No. 7 Approving the GAJA Annual Update|Order No. 7]] approves the Annual Update and finds Ironwood a strategic investment ([[2026-06 APSC Order No. 7 Approves the GAJA Rider Annual Update]]). - **2026-06-05 / 06-08** — Entergy files the [[Revised GAJA Rider Rate Schedule 73|revised Rate Schedule 73]] ($109,977,691); [[Staff Compliance Testimony on the Revised GAJA Rider|Staff verifies compliance]] and recommends approval. ## Notes The GAJA rider is the mechanism by which the cost of Entergy Arkansas's generation buildout actually reaches customer bills. Its filings recover the cost from all retail ratepayers and do not name any data-center or large-load customer as a driver of, or contributor to, the new generation.