ATLANTA — The Georgia sports and music halls of fame in Macon received some good news Thursday: They’ll keep a state subsidy for at least the next year.

But come July 1, 2011, both museums are supposed to be completely weaned from state tax dollars. That’s when a plan should be ready for someone else to pony up the roughly $1 million the state’s been paying out for the two halls.

“They have one year,” House Appropriations Chairman Ben Harbin said Thursday, as he discussed the state’s fiscal 2011 budget in the House of Representatives.

“Somebody else will be operating those (museums),” Harbin said. “It could be somewhere else (besides Macon).”

Also Thursday, state crime labs in Columbus and Moultrie won a last-minute reprieve from legislators when they approved a state budget with funding to keep them open.

The two facilities were supposed to be closed already, but after some give-and-take in the budgetary process, legislators found money to keep them open. A third lab, in Summerville, was not so lucky and will remain closed.

The House and Senate both signed off on the fiscal 2011 budget Thursday, the last day of the 2010 legislative session. It totals some $17.8 billion in state funds, and nearly $38.6 million when federal money the state spends is factored in.

There are cuts across all state departments, with education funding taking a smaller percentage cut in state funding, but a cut nonetheless. Because of that, House Minority Leader DuBose Porter, a Dublin Democrat who’s a candidate for governor, voted against the budget. Some of his fellow Democrats joined him, but support for the budget was largely bipartisan and passed the House 137-33.

Porter called, as he has all year, for improved sales tax collections, which he said could raise $500 million or so for education. But Harbin questioned Porter’s numbers, as Republicans have all session long, and said the only way to avoid cuts would be to raise taxes.

“We have to deal with what we have,” said Harbin, R-Evans.

But the Republican majority at the Capitol did raise taxes. They put a new tax on hospital revenues to shore up the state’s Medicaid budget. They also raised numerous fees to raise new money and let several sales tax exemptions — including one for community food banks and another for volunteer health clinics — sunset.

“We just can’t afford (the exemptions),” said House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Larry O’Neal, R-Warner Robins.

Legislators approved in the budget several construction projects in Middle Georgia, though not as many as in past years. For example, the Georgia Public Safety Training Center in Forsyth will get more than $5 million for repairs and roof replacements, and Macon State College will receive $2.47 million to equip its new teacher education building.

But the Legislature killed one of Gov. Sonny Perdue’s pet projects in the midstate, removing $9.1 million the governor had proposed to expand a horse park at the Georgia National Fairgrounds and Agricenter in Perry.

Still, the state has spent about $17 million on that horse park in recent years.

There’s also less money in the budget for road projects than Perdue wanted. The House and Senate cut the governor’s proposal for $300 million in new bonds for the Georgia Department of Transportation down to $200 million. But they also passed legislation that will let local voters decide in 2012 whether to adopt a new penny tax to pay for transportation projects.

To contact writer Travis Fain, call 361-2702.