July 25 (Bloomberg) -- Without California’s Healthy Families program, Alex Raffta might be bankrupt.

Raffta’s 12-year-old son became sick after the Bakersfield resident, the breadwinner for a family of four, lost his job as a grocery-store supervisor in January. Two emergency-room trips, minor surgery, doctor visits and medication were covered by the program, which offers health, dental and vision care to children without insurance.

“I don’t know what I would have done if he hadn’t been insured,” Raffta, 49, said in an interview. “I don’t mind losing my house or losing my car or anything, but my kids’ health is the most important thing.”

The next time he may not be so lucky. Legislation passed by California lawmakers slashes spending by $15.6 billion to close a $26 billion budget gap for the fiscal year that began July 1. Scores of state and local programs will feel the impact, from schools to parks to road maintenance. Healthy Families had its funding reduced by $124 million.

The cuts, following $18 billion removed when the Legislature passed a $100 billion budget in February, come at a time when the longest recession since the 1930s has left the state with an unemployment rate of 11.6 percent, double that of two years ago, and declining incomes have lowered tax collections 15 percent from a year earlier.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is expected to sign the legislation, using the line-item veto to eliminate differences in bills passed by the state Senate and Assembly. The deficit, which legislators had closed in February, reappeared by spring as the economy worsened.

Welfare Cuts

This time, about $880 million was cut from three welfare programs, including Healthy Families, in-home nursing care for the elderly and CalWorks, which offers financial support and services to the unemployed.

With the new cuts at Healthy Families, 785,000 children will be denied coverage, according to Children’s Defense Fund- California, a policy advocacy group in Sacramento, California.

“We have families coming in that are losing their jobs, they financially really can’t afford anything else,” said Jennifer Kwan, executive director of Cover the Kids, a Sacramento-based children’s health advocacy group. “This was their only other option.”

Three days of unpaid furloughs per month for about 200,000 state workers will be extended. While that will save about $1.3 billion, it means most state agencies will shut those days.

“The magnitude of the cuts is such that it could delay or dampen an economic recovery,” said Jean Ross, executive director of the California Budget Project, a Sacramento-based policy research group. “California is so large, and such an important part of the nation, that if our recovery is delayed, it could pull down the whole country.”

Park Furloughs

Cutbacks and furloughs mean park rangers will take longer to respond to reports of domestic violence, lost hikers, drunk drivers and excessive noise, said Scott Elliott, 37, a ranger at Plumas-Eureka State Park, about a three-hour drive northeast of Sacramento. “A lot of us feel like we’re at the breaking point right now.”

The budget also takes more than $4 billion from local governments. While some money will be paid back over time, cities and counties will have to make cuts in police and firefighting services, according to the League of California Cities.

“It’s the money literally that funds 100 percent of our street repair and road maintenance every year,” said Ashley Swearengin, 37, mayor of Fresno, the state’s fifth-largest city with almost 500,000 residents.

‘Hand-Me-Down Deficit’

Fresno’s $227 million general fund reflects a $27 million revenue shortage from last year, Swearengin said. The state is likely to take another $10 million with the budget agreement, she said.

“We’re just sort of getting the hand-me-down deficit” from the state, she said. “This is really a tough blow.”

School districts including those in Los Angeles, Santa Monica and Culver City say they may ask voters to approve special tax assessments to retain services.

Culver City’s school district informed employees that compensation may be reduced next year, Superintendent Myrna Rivera Coté wrote in a letter on the district’s Web site.

The district has cut more than $6 million over the past two years and without a local parcel tax more reductions will be required, Coté said. “We must act soon or the progress we’ve all worked so hard to achieve in Culver City will evaporate,” Coté wrote.

Classrooms are already swelling and electives are being canceled at Orville Wright Middle School, a math, science and aerospace magnet school in Los Angeles, said Gina Kanfer, mother of a 12-year-old son.

Class Size

Kindergarten to third grade class sizes at the local elementary school will rise to 24 from 20 in September and to 29 next year as the school cuts back on teachers, she said.

“They take away, and take away, and take away some more,” Kanfer said of the state’s education funding. “It’s our kids who are the ones getting hurt.”

Raffta, the Bakersfield resident, has a job as a produce salesman after collecting unemployment for the first time in his life. The company doesn’t provide health insurance, he said. He and his wife will lose their supplemental coverage from his former job at the end of August.

At that point, Raffta plans to find coverage for his wife and go without it himself. His children would face a cutoff from Healthy Families if his income were to rise above the $55,128 maximum for eligibility.

Raffta said he would consider leaving California if he were to find himself unemployed again -- for a state that “is not going to suffocate programs that are going to help the future generation.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Ryan Flinn in San Francisco at rflinn@bloomberg.net; Michael B. Marois in Sacramento at mmarois@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: July 24, 2009 20:29 EDT