The two City Hall aides charged with extortion for allegedly pressuring the Boston Calling music festival to hire union workers were acting with the full weight of the mayor’s office to improperly intrude in a local union dispute, federal prosecutors said in recent court filings.
Kenneth Brissette, the city’s tourism head, and Timothy Sullivan, head of intergovernmental affairs, had asked a federal judge to dismiss charges of conspiracy and extortion, saying they committed no crime when they called on the Boston Calling music festival to pay workers fair wages. They have been on paid leave since their arrest a year ago.
But federal prosecutors argued in the recent filings that Brissette and Sullivan went too far by using the power of their positions to threaten the company that runs the concert on City Hall Plaza that it could lose its permits — and $3 million in revenue from the music festival, as well as the possibility of hosting future concerts — if it failed to hire union workers.
At one point, according to federal prosecutors, Brissette and Sullivan called concert organizers from their preparation work for a meeting in September 2014, on the eve of the concert, to demand that they hire union workers. No representatives from the union, Local 11 of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, were there.
“The defendants effectively put themselves in the shoes of the union but with the weight of City Hall behind them — including the power to grant or deny the entertainment license and the long-term license agreement,” prosecutors argued, adding that if Boston Calling “had not received its entertainment license, this would have been a financial disaster for the company. Representatives of [the company] told the defendants as much.
“The victims left the meeting fearing, among other things, that if they did not surrender to the defendants’ demands and hire members of Local 11, they would not receive their permits, the music festival would be cancelled, they would have no long-term license agreement, and they would face certain financial ruin,” the prosecutors said.
Sullivan and Brissette also argued that the city had a right to lease out City Hall Plaza on the condition that Boston Calling hire union workers, but prosecutors stated that Boston Calling had already signed an agreement to lease the property from the city. The organization had already hosted concerts there for two years, without any condition that it hire union workers.
The request that the organization hire union workers came under the new administration of Mayor Martin Walsh, a former labor leader who took office in 2014.
Prosecutors suggested that Brissette and Sullivan were not acting on behalf of the city’s interests, but the mayor’s.
“The defendants were not acting on behalf of the city as a proprietor of City Hall Plaza imposing conditions reasonably related to the use of the plaza, but rather as representatives of the mayor, impermissibly intruding into the collective bargaining process as regulators,” the prosecutors argued.
Walsh has not been charged in the case and has refused to comment, deferring to the ongoing legal proceedings.
US District Judge Leo T. Sorokin has not indicated when he will rule on the defendants’ motion to dismiss the case.
Milton J. Valencia can be reached at milton.valencia@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @miltonvalencia.