# 2026-04 APSC Evidentiary Hearing on the GAJA Rider The public evidentiary hearing on Entergy Arkansas's 2026 Annual Update to the [[Generating Arkansas Jobs Act (GAJA) rider]], held before the full [[Arkansas Public Service Commission]] in the Commission Hearing Room at 1000 Center Street, Little Rock, on **2026-04-29**. Originally scheduled for 2026-04-28 by [[Order No. 3 Hearing Set for April 28]]; rescheduled by [[Order No. 4 Hearing Rescheduled to April 29]] for [[Office of the Arkansas Attorney General|AG]] counsel availability. ## Sources The hearing produced a 301-page transcript, filed in [[psc/docket-26-008-tf-2026-05-22/_overview|Docket 26-008-TF]] as Doc. 74 on 2026-05-08 by Bushman Court Reporting (a [[Veritext Court Reporting|Veritext]] Company). **The transcript itself is not available online**; per the [[Hearing Transcript Filing Notice|filing notice]], it is held by the [[Karen Shook|Secretary of the Commission]] at 1000 Center Street, Little Rock, AR 72201, for in-person inspection, and paid copies are available from Veritext at 501-372-5115. The pre-hearing documentary record retrieved in this ingest: - [[Order No. 3 Hearing Set for April 28]] — set the initial date - [[Order No. 4 Hearing Rescheduled to April 29]] — rescheduled; ordered supplemental briefing - [[Order No. 5 Pre-Hearing Issues]] — Commission's directives on what parties must address at the hearing - [[Palmer Rebuttal on Ironwood]] — filed 9 days before the hearing - The Joint Motion for Stipulations, Issues List and Hearing Procedures (Doc. 70, 2026-04-23) — not retrieved this session; would document the contested issues going into the hearing ## What happened The hearing addressed Entergy Arkansas's request for $110.4 million in 2026 GAJA Rider revenue (~$5.77/month residential bill impact), and the live contested issues: - **The Ironwood strategic-investment question** (raised by [[APSC Staff Testimony on the GAJA Rider|Staff witness Mark Herring]]): whether the Ironwood combustion turbine — disputed-recovery share ~$33.9M — was designated a Strategic Investment under Act 373. - **The cost-of-debt methodology** (raised by [[Attorney General Testimony on the GAJA Rider|AG witness Greg R. Meyer]]): whether Entergy used an unreasonably low short-term-debt balance, overstating the return on the $1.24B of CWIP. - **Rate-impact comparisons** (per [[Order No. 5 Pre-Hearing Issues]]): the first-billing-cycle-of-January-2026 versus first-billing-cycle-of-June-2026 comparison across all rate and rider schedules. Without the transcript, the oral exchange — including any testimony on data-center load growth as a driver, any party's argument linking data-center demand to the new generation, or any commissioner question on cost allocation — is not in the corpus. ## Significance The hearing was the single procedural step at which the [[Ironwood]] / cost-of-debt disputes were litigated on a complete record before the Commission. The Commission's substantive ruling on the disputes has not yet issued as of 2026-05-12 ([[Order No. 6 Legislative Council Report|Order No. 6]] is procedural). **The transcript is the single most-important documentary gap in the GAJA Rider record** — see [[Hearing Transcript Filing Notice]].