RALEIGH — North Carolina paid more than $263 million in management fees to outside fund managers during the most recent fiscal year for its various pensions, an increase of almost 14 percent over the previous year.

Much of the spike in fees went to fixed income investments such as bonds; management fees for those investments totaled more than $41 million, according to the state treasurer’s office. Angelo Gordon, a New York investment firm, has two funds, valued in June at about $1.6 billion, that were paid about $41 million in 2009. Close to $40 million of that were incentive fees to investment managers achieving above-average returns.

The fixed income investments traditionally have been managed by state employees rather than outside managers. The Angelo Gordon investments were made in 2008 under former state Treasurer Richard Moore.

“Why don’t they bring more money in-house?” asked Ed Macheski, a retired New York money manager and Alamance County resident who has been critical of the pension system. “They could run it a lot cheaper. There are a lot of major pension funds that run fixed income and equity in-house. They could save a lot of money.”

Heather Franco, a spokeswoman for state Treasurer Janet Cowell, said the fees reflect the funds’ performance in 2009. One fund was up by more than 33 percent. Another was up by about 19 percent.

Representatives of Angelo Gordon did not respond to a request for comment.

North Carolina officials have said that the cost to administer North Carolina Retirement Systems is about 0.4 percent of the $68.7 pension system. This is lower than the typical administrative costs for a 401(K) plan, amounting to about 1 percent of assets. North Carolina Retirement Systems includes pensions for state employees and teachers, judicial employees, local government employees, and legislators.

“Our total cost to manage the pension fund is extremely low,” Cowell said in June. “However, it is important to consistently work to find ways to save on expenses and provide the greatest return for our state’s public workers.”

North Carolina had asked for and received fee reductions of more than $2.4 million recently from five managers of stock funds: Numeric Investors, Longview Partners, Relational Investors, TimesSquare Capital Management, and Turner Investments.

North Carolina paid Relational Investors about $6.6 million last year — or 1.26 percent of the $525.7 million that the Teachers’ and State Employees’ Retirement System has invested with the company. That’s about five times the percentage that the average company got for managing stock investments from North Carolina’s pension fund.

Moore, the former state treasurer, works for Relational as a managing director.

Sarah Okeson is a contributor to Carolina Journal.