Never eager to sign onto Camp Coughlin in a 2017 leadership fight, veteran Assemblywoman Valerie Vainieri Huttle (D-37) of Bergen County will take the hit this week with the loss of her Human Services chairmanship.

Vainieri Huttle, whose family hails from North Bergen, chose not to tomahawk capsizing Speaker Vincent Prieto (D-32) as he headed toward political oblivion.

Close to Prieto’s overlord, state Senator Nice Sacco (D-32), and close, too, to Bergen County Democratic Committee Chairman Lou Stellato, a Prieto ally, Vainieri Huttle stayed loyal to the North even as Middlesex and South Jersey moves made Assemblyman Craig Coughlin (D-19) inevitably speaker.

Vainieri will be replaced by Joann Downey of LD16.  Despite the loss of Human Services, Vainieri Huttle is taking over the Homeland Security Committee from Annette Quijano, who’s heading up the Judiciary Committee in the new session.