# 2026-06 APSC Order No. 7 Approves the GAJA Rider Annual Update On **2026-06-04** the full Arkansas Public Service Commission ([[Doyle Webb|Webb]], [[Justin Tate|Tate]], [[Katie Anderson|Anderson]]) issued **Order No. 7** in [[psc/docket-26-008-tf-2026-05-22/_overview|Docket 26-008-TF]], approving Entergy Arkansas's first Generating Arkansas Jobs Act annual update and ruling that **[[Ironwood]] qualifies as a strategic investment** — the merits ruling the docket had been waiting on since the 2026-04-29 hearing. Entergy filed the revised Rate Schedule No. 73 the next day (Doc. 78, 2026-06-05; revenue requirement **$109,977,691**), and Staff verified compliance and recommended approval on 2026-06-08 (Doc. 79). ## Sources - [[Order No. 7 Approving the GAJA Annual Update]] — Doc. 77, the order (Tier-1, `raw/psc/docket-26-008-tf-order7-2026-06-10/`). - [[Revised GAJA Rider Rate Schedule 73]] — Doc. 78, the approved per-class rates. - [[Staff Compliance Testimony on the Revised GAJA Rider]] — Doc. 79, Herring's verification. ## What happened The Commission: (1) **approved** the Annual Update ("EAL's Annual Update is approved as ordered herein," p. 24); (2) accepted Staff's $463,000 before-tax rate-of-return correction (residential impact $5.77 → **$5.74/month** at 1,000 kWh); (3) held that "nothing in Act 373 specifically requires a finding that a particular investment is a 'Strategic Investment' prior to a utility's Annual Update for a facility which falls under Ark. Code Ann. § 23-4-1304(w)" and itself found that "Ironwood qualifies as a strategic investment under Ark. Code Ann. § 23-4-1303(10)" (pp. 21–22) — keeping the contested ~$33.9M in the rider; (4) rejected the Attorney General's short-term-debt recommendation because "Act 373 does not grant the Commission the authority" to direct EAL's capital structure (pp. 22–23); and (5) imposed forward transparency directives (Independent Monitor availability, rebuttal tariff sheets, five-year revenue-requirement and bill-impact projections in every future update). ## Significance - **T002 is resolved — in Entergy's favor, by the exact hybrid path the dialectics mapped.** [[D004 Synthesis]] had narrowed T002 to a "minimum content" question committed to the Commission's interpretive judgment; Order No. 7 answers it: no prior designation finding is required for a § 23-4-1304(w) transition facility, and the approving order itself can supply the § 23-4-1303(10) finding (Staff's conditional-concession path). See [[T002 - Ironwood Strategic Investment Designation Requirement]] (`resolved-via-Order-No-7`). - **The full $110M (revised: $109.98M) now flows to bills.** All 738,836 retail customers pay a return on $1.24B of construction work in progress for generation that has not yet produced a kilowatt-hour; the rider's first annual cycle closed with the only customer relief being a $463K arithmetic correction. - **The Commission described its own authority as constrained.** Twice in one order: it cannot direct capital structure (§ 23-4-1304(m)), and it treated the designation question as answerable inside the annual update rather than requiring separate adjudication. For the cost-allocation record, the load-bearing fact is that **Act 373's architecture, as now construed, leaves the rider's annual review as a verification exercise** — the contest space narrows to prudence/refunds under § 23-4-1304(h)/(v) and the benchmarks (the order's own refund caution). - **Precedent for every future GAJA plant.** Any pre-Act-373 resource with a qualifying application + post-2025 approval order is rider-eligible without designation litigation; post-Act resources reach the rider through CECPN orders that can carry the designation finding inside them. ## Open follow-ups - Rehearing / judicial review (§ 23-2-422/-423) by Staff, the AG, or AAEA — none observed as of 2026-06-10. - The 2027 Annual Update will carry the first court-ordered five-year GAJA projection — a forward-visibility document for the cumulative ratepayer cost of the buildout.