A New Hampshire man is under investigation for possible civil rights violations.

Frank Hobbs Jr. is accused of swiping someone else’s signs supporting gay rights.

New Hampshire authorities say Hobbs was caught on camera stealing signs from a Goffstown intersection.

A woman had lawfully placed signs in support of the LGBTQ community, and when one of them disappeared, she decided to do some detective work.

“She set up a trail camera to monitor the intersection and make sure her signs weren’t taken down,” said Senior Assistant New Hampshire Attorney General Sean Locke.

Sure enough, that camera recorded another theft taking place.

“She was able to capture someone on video coming to the intersection removing the signs and driving away,” said Locke.

It happened last June during Pride Month, and the New Hampshire Department of Justice has now filed a complaint against Hobbs accusing him of civil rights violations.

Local law enforcement said he was easily recognizable because he’s well known in the community.

According to court documents, Hobbs denied knowing anything about the incident, but when informed there were photos, he said he’d been told by people at Town Hall he could remove signs that displayed “pedophile symbols” and that he found the signs offensive.

“These identity-based or bias-based behaviors and unlawful acts create a perception in the community that this may not be a safe place if you’re a person who identifies as LGBTQ+ if these signs are getting torn down,” said Locke.

Hobbs has not returned multiple requests for comment.

He will have a hearing and is facing thousands of dollars in fines depending on what a judge decides.

Welcome to 2025. May it be the most boring year ever.

Over the holidays, I taped a segment of “New Hampshire’s Business” with WMUR veteran Fred Kocher and Business NH Magazine editor Matt Mowry. It was time for Fred’s annual “crystal ball” episode, so we were prepped to talk about the year ahead.

The morning of the taping, I looked up last year’s episode to make sure I didn’t wear the same tie again. I also wanted a refresher on what we talked about. Big surprise: lack of housing, lack of child care — challenges that follow us into 2025.

I was also reminded that I participated remotely via Zoom for the December 2023 episode: I was in quarantine with my second case of COVID-19, though I suffered no symptoms (unlike my wife).

This year marks the fifth anniversary of the coronavirus pandemic, a worldwide outbreak blamed for the deaths of more than 7 million people, including 1.2 million in the United States and about 3,000 in New Hampshire.

COVID-19 upended every aspect of our lives. It shut down many businesses for months and spiked unemployment in New Hampshire to nearly 17%. We became instant converts to Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Webex and Google Meet and dusted off Skype. Social distancing became our mantra. It seemed like every idle manufacturing plant started pumping out hand sanitizer.

We started working remotely from home and were distracted regularly by the sound of delivery trucks for Amazon, FedEx and UPS racing up and down our streets, dropping off important merchandise, like toilet paper and Lysol.

Fred, Matt and I didn’t have time to talk about the pandemic during the five-minute “New Hampshire’s Business” segment, a rapid-fire program where we try to pour a gallon of news into a tiny cup.

It’s been on my mind as USA 500, a business networking group I belong to, plans its annual ski day at Loon Mountain Resort. Five years ago this February, our group was gathered in a private meeting room during which the conversation was peppered with talk about a strange flu outbreak that was hitting nursing homes in the Pacific Northwest. It seemed so far away and hardly something for local concern.

COVID-19 never went away. We’ve just learned to live with it. Businesses, including restaurants, retailers and health care providers, are still grappling with a shortage of workers. Businesses and consumers are still battling high prices that spiked during the pandemic and are only now beginning to stabilize.

What will this year’s unknown factors be? Check out longtime columnist Brad Cook’s latest “Cook on Concord” column for a refresher on what President-elect Donald Trump has on his to-do list — any of which has the potential to have a major impact on the economy.

The issues we did touch upon during our TV talk included how new Gov. Kelly Ayotte and the Legislature will address state revenue shortfalls as they create the next two-year state budget, the state’s continuing battle with opioid addiction and homelessness, and business concerns about cybersecurity. On the upside, we noted the rise of New Hampshire’s life sciences industry and the importance of the state’s health care industry.

My wish for “the most boring year ever” means only one where we aren’t blindsided by world events. With two major wars that show no signs of ending and acts of terror becoming commonplace both abroad and in the Unites States, we know to brace ourselves for some level of chaos.

When I finished the first draft of this column, the L.A. fires that have destroyed more than 12,000 structures and killed at least 24 people had yet to ignite. Chaos, sadly, found California right away this year.

The challenges we face in New Hampshire are not easily solved but within reach if we keep trying. As the giant sign inside the Life is Good T-shirt production center in Hudson reminds me, they are, like most everything else, “figureoutable.”

Talking about housing

NeighborWorks Southern New Hampshire has invited me to speak at its annual breakfast, 7:30 to 9 a.m., March 27, at the Manchester Country Club in Bedford. (Check out nwsnh.org. for ticket information.)

So far, I have a title for my talk — “Homeward Bound: Housing — and lots of it — is key to NH’s future.”

NeighborWorks Southern New Hampshire has more than 500 apartments in its rental portfolio. The nonprofit serves 81 communities and has housed more than 1,600 people.

If you have some housing news or ideas you’d like to share, please send them along to mikecote@yankeepub.com.

Currently, only lower-income families earning up to 350 percent of the federal poverty level are eligible. That works out to about $112,525 for a family of four.

The first public hearing on House Bill 115, which has 10 Republican co-sponsors in the House, in addition to four Republican Senators, was held on Thursday. The bill would remove the household income criteria from eligibility requirements for the program.

“Proposals to expand the State’s over budget, unaccountable voucher program to more than $100 million per year are misguided and will only serve to further harm public school students by cutting into already limited State funds,” Zack Sheehan, executive director of the N.H. School Funding Fairness Project, said in a statement. “Heading into school budget season, I expect to hear a lot about rising costs associated with special education and the challenges of budgeting for those unpredictable costs. Meanwhile, the State barely makes a dent in fulfilling these mandated expenses, and was threatening to leave districts in the lurch for over $16 million in unreimbursed expenses.”

“The State is actively failing to fulfil its constitutional responsibility to adequately fund public education,” he said. “We should be focused on reducing property taxes by shifting more public school funding to the State, not expanding the voucher program.”

But the effort to open the program to more people has the support of Governor Kelly Ayotte.

During her inaugural speech last week, she promised to expand the program and make sure more families can put their children in the learning environment that is best for them.

“We strongly believe in public schools, but they don’t always fit for every child,” she said during a press conference Wednesday.

Ayotte said education freedom accounts have successfully helped children reach their full potential in a variety of learning environments. And while she said she supports universal Education Freedom Accounts, the timing for enacting that change remains hazy.

“I’ll work with the legislature on that as the ultimate goal and what we do over this biennium, I think regardless of whether we get to universal or not, we’ll be expanding those opportunities,” she said.

Efforts to expand the program failed last year.

State revenues are lagging and Republicans have said they are looking at possible areas where they can cut spending. Expanding education freedom accounts wouldn’t be a negligible expense, according to analysis from Reaching Higher NH, a nonprofit education think tank.

The organization’s analysis found universal eligibility for education freedom accounts could cost over $100 million per year. In the 2024-2025 school year, the program cost about $26 million. As of Wednesday evening, 502 people had logged their support of the bill, while 2,061 opposed it through the legislature’s website.

This story first appeared in Globe NH | Morning Report, our free newsletter focused on the news you need to know about New Hampshire, including great coverage from the Boston Globe and links to interesting articles from other places. If you’d like to receive it via e-mail Monday through Friday, you can sign up here.

Amanda Gokee can be reached at amanda.gokee@globe.com. Follow her @amanda_gokee.