MARYLANDERS know now where the $24.5 billion pension system buck stops: with Comptroller William Donald Schaefer, who also serves as chairman of the system's board of directors.

Mr. Schaefer knows as well as anyone that he now bears sharply focused responsibility for restoring the shaken system's operation to professional standards. In recent months, he has taken important steps to bring an appallingly dysfunctional, money-losing system under control.

In January, he will announce a new, top-to-bottom review of the system's operation. A well-known public pension consulting firm will analyze every function from investments to the fiduciary responsibilities of the individual board members. Too often in the past, directors have had more concern for the interest groups they represent than for responsibility to the system.

The results of that imbalance could not be more painful.

Having reached a value of $33 billion only two years ago, the system's assets plunged to the current level of $24.5 billion. The falling economy is not the only culprit.

As chronicled by The Sun's Michael Dresser, system failures include damaging secrecy, political favoritism and unconscionable inattention at almost every level from staff to directors. A member of the pension board before being elected its chairman, Mr. Schaefer himself missed 40 percent of the meetings while the fund dipped. The system's investment performance ranked last in a survey of large public pension systems.

For some time, the board rejected urgings from the legislature to bring in more investment expertise. The first of two consulting firms was hired last summer, and some of its recommendations are being implemented.

Money manager Nathan A. Chapman Jr., a political intimate of Gov. Parris N. Glendening's, was fired for allowing one of the sub-managers he hired to invest about $5 million in Mr. Chapman's own companies, a deal described by business ethics experts as a blatant conflict of interest.

An internal audit showed that Peter Vaughn, the system's recently departed executive director, told the fund's chief investment officer, Carol Boykin, to stop inquiring into Mr. Chapman's dealings with convicted stock swindler Alan B. Bond, the sub-manager who bought the Chapman stock. The $47 million entrusted to Mr. Bond dwindled to $14 million in one year.

Since that shocking and sorry episode, another underperforming asset manager has been terminated. More change seems certain.

Mr. Schaefer's storied "Do it now" approach is overdue but welcome.