The March 20 editorial “Avoiding a budget sinkhole” obliquely referred to the poor investment performance of Maryland’s pension fund, which makes the proposed $75 million contribution cut trifling in comparison. Over the past decade, the fund has paid more than $2 billion to Wall Street money managers for “advice” on selecting stocks, bonds and other investments. D uring this time, the fund has underperformed its peer group by $3 billion. Measured against a passive index of stocks and bonds, the underperformance totals $4 billion.

Indexing the bulk of the portfolio would require just six to 12 months and provide $200 million in immediate savings to the government with no damage to investment performance.

Jeff Hooke, Chevy Chase

The writer is managing director of Focus Investment Banking.