PROVIDENCE — They fear it’s a case of government efficiency gone too far.

It its final days last June, the General Assembly inserted language into the state budget that requires the governor to propose merging the state’s five advocacy offices — including the offices of the child advocate and mental health advocate — into a new Department of Advocacy.

The motivation, according to the House leadership, was simply to cut costs by streamlining services as the state struggles to close multimillion-dollar budget deficits.

But the advocates fear the plan would essentially kill their ability to protect Rhode Island’s most vulnerable citizens — children, the disabled and mentally ill — by stripping their offices of their most powerful weapon: autonomy.

“We have to really fight and tell people what’s happening,” state child advocate Jametta O. Alston said. “I think this is on a train that’s pulled into the station and I’m afraid it’s going to take off and destroy our advocacy.”

Alston was among representatives from six state departments yesterday invited to the basement of the Department of Health building by the governor’s Budget Office, as it begins to shape the reorganization. The agencies, which currently stand as independent departments, have a combined budget of $2.6 million and 20 employees — a sliver of the state’s $6.99 billion budget.

While small, they argue they are charged with the key task of protecting Rhode Island citizens who would otherwise have little voice in state affairs. Most of the advocates have the power to sue state leaders if they believe people are at risk.

Alston, for example, filed a sweeping class-action lawsuit against the governor and other state leaders in June, alleging widespread abuse. And just yesterday, state mental health advocate H. Reed Cosper filed a separate lawsuit over the state’s handling of emergency psychiatric patients.

Alston and Cosper were joined yesterday by the Developmental Disabilities Council, the Governor’s Commission on Disabilities and the Commission on the Deaf and Hard of Hearing and the Department of Elderly Affairs.

Cosper had issued an alert last week urging supporters to attend the meeting to defend what he described as a direct threat to his office’s independence. Between 40 and 50 people showed up.

Merging administrative functions at his office is unnecessary, could create legal conflicts and would weaken his ability to protect the state’s mentally ill, he said.

“Most of the agencies don’t have a secretary, never mind a personnel office,” Cosper said, noting that his office employs the equivalent of 3.7 full-time workers.

The Budget Office, as instructed by the Assembly in the budget approved in June, will use information garnered at yesterday’s meeting to introduce legislation aimed at creating a Department of Advocacy that would consolidate “communications and overhead expenditures” at the state’s advocacy agencies.

The ultimate plan will be presented in the governor’s fiscal 2009 budget proposal set to be released in February.

“I think there are opportunities [for savings],” state budget officer Rosemary Booth Gallogly told the crowd of advocates and their supporters at yesterday’s meeting. “I understand there’s some anxiety about the creation of this department.”

The issue was discussed briefly in a public hearing during the final weeks of the previous legislative session. The advocates complained yesterday that they didn’t have the opportunity to speak at the hearing. And they complained there was no proof of actual savings from the proposed consolidation.

“The Carcieri administration is still examining the potential advantages and disadvantages of the General Assembly’s plan,” the governor’s spokesman Jeff Neal said after the meeting. “Regardless of whether or not this was a worthwhile idea, the administration is obligated to implement this new law. In doing so, we have asked the advocates themselves to propose to us how this new structure should work.”

House Finance Committee Chairman Steven M. Costantino, D-Providence, acknowledged that the reorganization “is not something, quite frankly, you immediately see savings, but in the long-term you see savings… Are they able to combine some of the purchasing or the use of space? That would be the hope.”

“We cannot afford at this point in time, these separate turfs that people have,” he said. “In no way did we interfere with the function of each advocacy piece. There are good people who do good work and we would hope that continues.”

Costantino said he believes departments could overcome potential conflicts in which the child advocate may represent a child whose parents are represented by the mental health advocate.

Alston, however, fears it won’t be that simple.

The new Department of Advocacy would presumably include an administrator that would handle the budget requests of each advocate. She said the measure would make it extremely difficult to file lawsuits against the same government leaders who would ultimately create her budgets.

“It’s scary to think someone could dictate who you can sue,” she said. “If I’m reporting to someone, they can say, ‘If you do that I’m going to cut your budget.’ ”

Once the reorganization is proposed in the governor’s budget, the Assembly will spend the subsequent months debating the proposal, which likely won’t be decided until June.

speoples@projo.com