For the first time in California history, courts will close one day each month because there isn't enough money to keep them open. Advocates for battered women say domestic violence programs around the state could be shut down. And officials are preparing for the grim work of deciding which state parks will be padlocked.

That was just some of the fallout a day after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger whacked $500 million on top of more than $15 billion in budget cuts the Legislature approved last week.

Meanwhile, Schwarzenegger's popularity has sunk to an all-time low in a survey that found he's now about on par with Gray Davis, whom the governor replaced in a 2003 recall.

"People are deeply concerned about the direction of the economy and where California is," said Mark Baldassare, head of the Public Policy Institute of California, which conducted the poll. "There's a sense things are not going well."

That sense was certainly in evidence as the California Judicial Council voted to shutter every court in the state the third Wednesday of each month. With a $414 million budget gap for the court system, the 21-member council took the unprecedented step to save an estimated $85 million.

From criminal courts to family courts, the closures will shutter legal business and have drawn warnings that already crowded local jails could be even more jammed. But the alternative, court officials said, was further cuts and possible layoffs around the state.

Elsewhere, officials with the California Partnership to End Domestic Violence lambasted Schwarzenegger for using his line-item veto to eliminate the Department of Public Health's Domestic Violence Program. It provides $20 million to 94 shelters and centers statewide that offer transitional housing, legal advocacy and other services to abuse victims.

"There are many horrible state cuts, but this one strikes me as particularly painful," said Michele Lew, president and CEO of Asian Americans for Community Involvement, which serves about 2,000 domestic violence victims each year at its San Jose shelter.

While AACI's program does receive other state funding, the money Schwarzenegger eliminated was its largest funding source - more than a fifth of the program's roughly $1 million budget, said Lew, who is also a member of the Mercury News editorial board.

Like other domestic violence programs around the state, "We're looking at staffing cutbacks," Lew said Friday. "We're trying to determine what the impact is on clients. This is truly life and death."

In another move that's sure to be unpopular, administration officials plan to decide in early September which state parks will be shut because of the budget. Officials estimate the parks budget will lose close to $40 million over the next year between spending cuts, employee furloughs and lost admission fees, and the governor estimates that as many as 100 parks will close.

The list of targeted parks will be released in early September, said Roy Stearns, a spokesman for the state parks system. In the meantime, officials hope to reduce that number by soliciting money from cities, nonprofits and philanthropists.

Schwarzenegger's job approval rating is now at 28 percent, according to the PPIC poll. The survey of 2,501 adults was taken July 7-21, at the height of budget negotiations but before the $26 billion deficit was resolved.

Schwarzenegger may be suffering from the high expectations he raised at the outset of his term, said Jack Pitney, government professor at Claremont McKenna College.

"He was going to be an action governor, he was going to blow up the boxes," Pitney said. Now, "he has become part of the Sacramento system he came to office to end."

The Legislature's approval ratings are at 17 percent; 79 percent of residents think the state is going in the wrong direction; and 75 percent think the state's economy will remain "bad" over the next 12 months. The poll had a 2 percentage-point margin of error.

Also on Wednesday, Schwarzenegger announced he would call the Legislature into special session in late September to debate overhauling the state's tax system. California's heavy reliance on volatile sources of revenue, such as taxes on capital gains, has created perpetual boom-and-bust budget cycles.

A panel appointed by the governor and legislators has been meeting since the spring to examine ways to stabilize state finances. It is expected to issue its recommendations Sept. 20, and the Legislature would convene for the special session soon after that.