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State veterinary loan repayment laws
Georgia
August 2008
§ 20-3-374. Service cancelable loan fund
(a) The authority shall maintain a service cancelable loan fund to which shall be credited:
(1) State funds appropriated for use by the authority for service cancelable loan purposes;
(2) Unrestricted moneys received by gift or otherwise and other moneys available for and determined by the authority to be available for the purposes of the fund; and
(3) Outstanding educational loans held by the authority under this subpart as to which the borrower has a right to repay in cash or cancel the obligation for cash repayment through service in designated fields.
(b) State funds appropriated for service cancelable loans shall be used by the authority to the greatest extent possible for the purposes designated in this subpart in accordance with the following:
(3) DOCTORS OF VETERINARY MEDICINE. The authority is authorized to make service cancelable educational loans to residents of Georgia who are enrolled in school in the field of doctor of veterinary medicine, including veterinary surgery, obstetrics, dentistry, and all other specialties of veterinary medicine. Loans may be made to students enrolled in a veterinary college or in a veterinary division of a university or college accredited by the American Veterinary Medical Association who are pursuing a program of study leading to the degree of doctor of veterinary medicine or its equivalent. The authority shall from time to time, by regulation, designate specialties within the veterinary science field that qualify for service cancelable loans under this paragraph. In designating the qualified specialties, the authority shall give preference to those specialties in which there are shortages of persons trained in that specialty in the State of Georgia. Loans made under this paragraph need not be limited to students attending a school located in the State of Georgia. However, any and all loans made under this paragraph shall be conditional upon the student agreeing that the loan shall be repaid by the student either:
(A) Practicing in the approved qualified field in a geographical area in the State of Georgia approved by the authority. For service repayment, the loan shall be repaid at a rate of one year of service for each academic year of study or its equivalent for which a loan is made to the student under this paragraph; or
(B) In cash repayment with assessed interest thereon in accordance with the terms and conditions of a promissory note that shall be executed by the student.
A geographical area for service repayment through services rendered shall not be approved unless the area is a rural or sparsely populated area of the state or in a community of 10,000 population or less according to the United States decennial census of 2000 or any future such census and experiencing a shortage of licensed veterinarians to meet the needs of owners or producers of farm animals used for or in connection with the production of commercial food products. If the loan is not repaid by services rendered, it must be repaid by the student in cash with interest thereon in accordance with the terms of the promissory note executed by the student; and
(4) CRITICAL SHORTAGE FIELDS. The authority is authorized to make service cancelable educational loans to residents of the State of Georgia enrolled in any field of study that the authority, from time to time, designates by regulation as a field in which a critical shortage of trained personnel exists in the State of Georgia. Loans made under this paragraph need not be limited to students attending schools located within the State of Georgia. However, any and all loans made under this paragraph shall be conditional upon the student agreeing that the loan shall be repaid by the student either:
(A) Practicing in the designated field in a geographical area in the State of Georgia approved by the authority. For service repayment, the loan shall be repaid at a rate of one year of service for each academic year of study or its equivalent for which a loan is made to the student under this paragraph; or
(B) In cash repayment with assessed interest thereon in accordance with the terms and conditions of a promissory note that shall be executed by the student.
The authority is authorized to place other conditions and limitations on loans made under this paragraph as it may deem necessary to fill the void that has created the critical shortage in the field.
(c) All students receiving loans under this Code section shall execute, prior to the disbursement of any loan proceeds to or for the benefit of that student, a promissory note containing the terms and conditions of the service repayment and cash repayments. Except as prohibited by federal or other state laws, individuals that fail to fulfill the terms and conditions of cash repayment may, without judicial action, be subject to garnishment of their pay, loss of a professional license, offset of lottery winnings, and offset of a state tax refund in accordance with rules and regulations promulgated by the authority not inconsistent with the provisions of this part.
(d) The total sum of service cancelable loans made by the authority in any fiscal year from state appropriations shall not exceed the amount of funds for such loan purposes specified in annual appropriations Acts. Funds in the service cancelable loan fund account that are not expended by the authority for service cancelable loans during any fiscal year shall become a part of the general loan fund account.
(e) If the corporation, pursuant to Code Section 20-3-273, pays or has paid interest to the authority on a service cancelable loan made under this Code section, and if the borrower repays all or a portion of the loan through services rendered as provided for in this Code section, then the authority shall, in accordance with its regulations and in consideration of the services rendered by the borrower, repay to the corporation on behalf of the borrower all or a portion of the interest paid to the authority by the corporation under Code Section 20-3-273. To the extent that this subsection does not apply to all service cancelable loans made to a borrower pursuant to this Code section, the authority is authorized, for purposes of this subsection, to consider the loans made that are the subject of this subsection as being the earlier loans made to the borrower.
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