Last week was not such a good one for MGM and its plans to plant a new casino flag in New England.

First, Connecticut Attorney General George Jepsen delivered a timely kick in the teeth.

Jepsen filed a brief in federal court asking for the dismissal of a lawsuit the Vegas gambling company filed to stop Connecticut's two American Indian tribes from planning for a competing facility close to the MGM's proposed new casino in Springfield, Mass.

The attorney general said, essentially, the law that allows the two tribes to begin planning a northern Connecticut casino doesn't actually legalize one. If MGM wants to plan and seek one, too, there's nothing stopping them.

Curiously, though, the attorney general notes, MGM is precluded from operating a casino in much of Connecticut anyway, by virtue of its Massachusetts casino license, which prohibits the company from any other gambling ventures within a 50-mile radius of Springfield.

Then, after Jepsen more or less lampooned its federal lawsuit, MGM's own fresh retrenchment from Springfield, abandoning plans for the project's signature glass tower, proposing a low-rise hotel instead, put a cloud over the license for the entire endeavor.

By the end of last week, Springfield officials were discussing the idea of putting an advisory question on the November ballot, to see whether voters would want to see MGM's license pulled for failing to deliver on the promised tower.

After all, as some in important city political circles suggested last week, the big glassy tower over the city's downtown was the wow factor that helped MGM win the contest for a license.

MGM is now pitching the cheaper alternative — a low-rise hotel — as "more integrated" with the downtown.

I think the people of Springfield know a bait and switch when they see one, especially when it arrives from Vegas.

The MGM general who most interests me in the new Connecticut/Massachusetts casino wars is Alan Feldman, MGM executive vice president, who first started the corporate mining for Connecticut gambling dollars more than 20 years ago when he was a public relations executive for Mirage Resorts before it became MGM.

Feldman, who then helped host a trip to Vegas for Connecticut lawmakers considering a Mirage casino for Bridgeport, knows very well the way the Connecticut compact with its two tribes works, giving the tribes exclusive rights to slot machines in exchange for paying the state 25 percent of slot revenues.

Indeed, Feldman was the corporate spokesman for MGM when the company partnered with the Mashantucket Pequots for what the tribe and corporation said in 2006 would be a jointly owned company that would "acquire or develop gaming and non-gaming enterprises, including Indian and non-Indian gaming, throughout the United States and abroad."

We know how that turned out, about as well as the glass tower in Springfield.

No one should know better than Feldman that Connecticut cannot afford to legalize any new casino gambling in Connecticut in a way that would jeapordize slot revenue from the tribes, especially since the tribes have long contended that the payments would stop as soon as a competing casino was authorized, not when it opened.

But then Feldman is used to firing from the hip.

About five years ago, back when Donald Trump criticized an MGM project in Vegas, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Feldman fired back: "I can hardly imagine anyone's opinion that matters less than his."

That turns out to be a remark that was not especially prophetic.

This is the opinion of David Collins.

d.collins@theday.com

Twitter:@DavidCollinsct