A week after the Julian meeting, the senator announced another, this one of his own devising, about fixing the Eisenhower expressway. It was to be held at another middle school, Gwendolyn Brooks, a few blocks down Washington Boulevard from Julian.

Chief among state officials to be on hand — and with others, held up for admiration — was to be the state’s secretary of transportation and as such director of the Illinois Department of Transportation, the formidable IDOT, the senator announced in a release.

This was Ann Schneider, who was to resign under a cloud a scant nine months later, thanked tersely by the governor for “years of hard work and dedication.”

He did not thank her for drawing down on him accusations of “perpetuating [Gov.] Blagojevich-era practices” by hiring and promoting without apparent cause her stepdaughter and hundreds of others, as charged by the Better Government Association, thus “tainting” her leadership.

He introduced her replacement as…