If Congress enables states to collect sales taxes from all Internet retailers and Massachusetts legislators put in place a suitable transportation-financing plan, Treasurer Steven Grossman said he would want to see the new Internet sales revenues put toward reducing the sales-tax burden.

"Since the sales tax is a highly regressive tax -- and everybody knows it -- my proposal would be that we take all of those revenues that I was planning and would have invested in transportation infrastructure, and use them to reduce the state sales tax," Grossman told the News Service on Wednesday.

Grossman said the Marketplace Fairness Act has bipartisan support in Congress, and said that if transportation, infrastructure and education are adequately financed any revenues gained from Internet sales should go toward reducing the sales-tax rate.

If online retailers had to collect and remit state sales taxes, that would have generated $23 billion nationwide and $387 million for Massachusetts in 2011, Grossman said. The use of $400 million in new revenue would allow the state to reduce the sales tax from 6.25 percent to about 5.75 percent, Grossman said.

Grossman said he had not spoken to Gov. Deval Patrick, House Speaker Robert DeLeo or Senate President Therese Murray about the reduction in sales tax, an idea Beacon Hill Republicans have pushed without success since Patrick and the Democrat-controlled Legislature raised the sales-tax rate from 5 percent in 2009.

Continue reading at: http://www.lowellsun.com/todaysheadlines/ci_22230354/mass-treasurer-want...

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — The treasurers of Connecticut and Massachusetts are among officials nationwide who are reviewing public pension investments in response to the fatal shootings of 20 children and six adults in a Connecticut elementary school last week.

Massachusetts Treasurer Steve Grossman has directed the state pension fund to review any investments in gun, ammunition and other companies.

Grossman stopped short of calling for divestment in gun companies. He said it’s the duty of the $51 billion fund to maximize investment returns for retirees, but he said the violence in Newtown, where the gunman also killed his mother and himself, should force policymakers at all levels to make changes.

Continue reading online at: http://www.boston.com/news/education/2012/12/19/mass-treasurer-reviews-p...

TAUNTON —

Speaking to a crowd of business leaders, State Treasurer Steven Grossman called transportation and infrastructure the biggest challenges facing Massachusetts in the coming decades.

“We will never realize our full potential in the commonwealth … unless we weave together, knit together the entire commonwealth with infrastructure, commuter rail and technology,” said Grossman, who addressed state Sen. Marc Pacheco’s Business and Economic Advisory Council Friday morning at Bella Roma restaurant.

“He has been to southeastern Massachusetts dozens upon dozens of times,” Pacheco, D-Taunton, said when introducing Grossman. “In his role as treasurer, he has been very hands on.”

Read more: http://www.tauntongazette.com/news/x1665842526/State-treasurer-says-tran...

[Excerpt]

For the first time since going public in 1995, Brooks Automation Inc. added a woman to its board of directors this year.

There is also more pressure on companies to diversify their top ranks from shareholders and state treasurers, including Steve Grossman of Massachusetts. Grossman issued guidelines that consider the presence of women in executive suites and in the boardroom when investing state pension funds.

Click here to read the whole story: http://www.boston.com/business/news/2012/11/30/boston-club-census-women-...

(NECN) - Massachusetts State Treasurer Steve Grossman stopped by Monday’s edition of “Broadside” to discuss the proposed sales tax levy.

“It’s about mainstream fairness, to start with,” Grossman said. “Half a million people in Massachusetts work in the retail sector of the economy, and every retailer in Massachusetts is on an un-level playing field.”

Grossman said it’s too difficult for those retailers to compete with Internet giants such as Amazon.

Click here to watch the video: http://goo.gl/8WWIP

Photo courtesy of W. Marc Bernsau

Prior to being elected Treasurer in 2010, Steven Grossman spent 35 years as CEO of Grossman Marketing Group in Somerville, a 102-year-old, fourth-generation family business founded as Massachusetts Envelope Co. In 2002, he made an unsuccessful bid for the Democratic nomination for governor. He has also served as chairman of the state and national Democratic parties. Grossman has been mentioned as a possible candidate for governor in 2014 and could join other contenders including U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz, Attorney General Martha Coakley and Lt. Gov. Timothy Murray. He spoke recently to Thomas Grillo, the Boston Business Journal’s real estate editor, ...

Continue reading at (requires subscription): http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/print-edition/2012/11/09/outside-the-b...

Almost two years ago, Massachusetts Treasurer-elect Steve Grossman told an audience at a Boston Club event that he would use his power to try to move the needle on the number of women directors on public companies' boards in Massachusetts. He is meeting his promise, after the state pension system board adopted a "zero tolerance for zero diversity" policy earlier this year. Boards that lack diversity face automatic "no" votes on proxy issues supported by management.

It is designed to send a not-so-subtle message - one that public companies in general and those in Massachusetts in particular have been reluctant to hear. Despite the best efforts of the Boston Club, an organization of female executives, and others, the needle hasn't moved much. It's been stuck at about 11 percent, below the national average of 12.5 percent.

Continue reading at: goo.gl/rwtGh

Photo by W. Marc Bernsau

Treasurer Steven Grossman is putting the full weight of the state’s nearly $50 billion pension system behind efforts to increase female and minority representation on corporate boards in Massachusetts and across the nation.

Continue reading at: http://goo.gl/fTZty

(NECN) - It's been quite a week for politics.

Between the heated second presidential debate, the piling endorsements and growing attacks in Massachusetts race for U.S. Senate, Mass. Gov. Deval Patrick's critics hitting on his travel and Rep. John Tierney and Richard Tisei clashing in their only televised debate, it's not hard to believe we're less than three weeks away from Election Day.

Steve Grossman and Charlie Baker join Broadside to put the campaigns into perspective.

Grossman, a Democrat, ran for State Treasurer in Massachusetts in 2010 and won. That same year, Baker ran on the Republican ticket for governor of the Bay State - and lost to Democrat Deval Patrick.

Baker is also the former CEO of Harvard Pilgrim Healthcare, and Grossman was chair of the Democratic National Committee under former President Bill Clinton.

Watch the video for the complete discussion: http://www.necn.com/10/19/12/Broadside-Campaign-week-in-review/landing_b...

If small businesses are healthy, the economy is healthy. And the way for small businesses to thrive is having access to credit.

It’s a simple formula that has been tested mightily over the course of the Great Recession, which has had a chilling effect on both lenders and borrowers across the country following the financial meltdown of 2008.

Things are beginning to look up – especially here in Massachusetts. Thanks to a program promoted by the state treasurer’s office, 50 banks are making credit available to the small businesses that are the backbone of the Bay State economy.

Continue reading at: http://goo.gl/jIFnY