Stonington — State Rep. Diana Urban, D-North Stonington, plans to make good on one of her re-election promises Friday, when she plans to file a bill that would bond approximately $250,000 to repay the Connecticut small businesses and individuals who still are owed money by the now defunct Amistad America.

Currently, Urban has a list of about 20 businesses and individuals in 17 towns and cities who are owed money, including some in Groton, Mystic, Noank, Old Lyme and Waterford. Among those who have not been paid are Mystic Seaport, which is owed about $45,000, and BMTees Inc. of Taftville, which is owed more than $10,000.

“This has been a difficult situation for all of the Connecticut businesses and organizations who were left with debt owed to us by Amistad America. We appreciate Rep. Urban’s efforts on our behalf to help rectify the situation,” said Mystic Seaport President Steve White on Wednesday.

BMTees owner Deb Bilda could not be reached to comment.

Urban, who has pushed for the reimbursement since Amistad America shut down in 2014, owing more than $2 million to 50 entities across the country, said Wednesday she is prepared to justify her request to expected skeptical legislators facing a massive deficit in the upcoming state budget process.

She said the Connecticut small businesses and individuals should be repaid because not only did they pay taxes that contributed to the $9 million in state funding given to Amistad America but the state Department of Community and Economic Development did not properly monitor how the nonprofit group spent the state money.

She said the recent election of Donald Trump should send a message to legislators.

“The last election was about the little guy feeling left out. This is one of the most visible steps we can take to say ‘we care about you and your small business.’ It’s time for us to pay attention to what happened in the presidential election. These small businesses felt like they got screwed by their own state,” she said.

Urban, who is an economist, stressed that small businesses are crucial to the state’s economic web and the money they generate continues to circulate through the state economy.

“They're not going anywhere. They're not moving offshore so they don’t have to pay taxes,” she said.

Urban plans to discuss her bill with the state representatives and senators who make up the southeastern Connecticut delegation when the group meets on Thursday. The new legislative sessions begins in January.

She pointed out that while she is fighting to get the small businesses and individuals repaid, the state plans to continue providing more than $300,000 a year in funding to Discovering Amistad, the new group which bought and repaired the ship with state funding after the vessel was sold out of receivership. She said the money she is requesting could come from that allocation.

Urban said she hopes to assemble support from both Democrats and Republicans and especially legislators who represent the communities were the creditors are from.

While she said she understands how bad the state budget deficit is, she added, “We talk about how important small businesses are and how their money circulates around the state. It is our responsibility to get that money back to them and into the economy.”

In September, during a special General Assembly session to approve financial assistance for Sikorsky Aircraft, Urban made a pitch for repayment of Amistad creditors.

“If we can spend $220 million for Sikorsky to stay in Connecticut, we can afford to pay our small businesses whose tax dollars helped pay to build the Amistad,” she said in a speech on the House floor. “These businesses then provided goods and services in good faith and got left holding the bag — in essence getting hit twice.”

She said that when she talks to her fellow legislators about the Amistad issue, they are “stunned” to discover that the creditors are still owed money.

“They think all was made right with the receivership,” she said.

Urban’s plan would give those owed money five years to come forward. She said there are more creditors than those listed in court records, as some did not file the initial paperwork because they thought they would never be repaid.

They were correct, as the receivership process and eventual sale of the schooner did not provide for any repayment for the creditors.

Urban said that instead of trying to get the money approved through the State Bond Commission, she wants it to go through the entire legislative process, complete with a committee hearing on its merits.

“I don’t just want it to be my request,” she said.

Urban said her suggestions to repay the creditors have been rebuffed by state officials in the past.

“This time I won’t back down,” she said.

As for not requesting money to repay creditors from other states, Urban said she feels bad about those businesses but she is trying to make her request reasonable. She said the state has a responsibility to the Connecticut-based creditors because it built the ship and then continued to fund it.

One person she said she will not be helping is Greg Belanger, the former executive director of Amistad America, who says he is owed $139,000 in back pay.

“It will be a cold day in hell before we pay him back,” she said.

Amistad America, formed in 1998 and based in Hamden, lost its nonprofit status in 2012 for failing to file three years of tax returns. Nevertheless, the state continued to make annual $360,000 payments to the organization, which fell deeper and deeper into debt, until finally freezing funding for the 2014-15 fiscal year as controversy over the organization’s lack of fiscal accountability intensified. The organization had provided little documentation about how it was spending state funding.

Following stories by The Day about how Amistad America had spent the $9 million in state funding and calls for an investigation by Urban, the state finally conducted an audit, seized the ship in the summer of 2014 and sold it to Discovering Amistad for $315,000. The state the provided $957,000 to Discovering Amistad so it could purchase and repair the ship.

The ship has now been repaired and relaunched and Discovering Amistad is developing a new educational mission that will keep the vessel in Connecticut most of the year.

j.wojtas@theday.com