Actuary

John P. Fayolle, an actuary who was founder and president of the pension-planning business Financial Security International, died of kidney failure Wednesday at Greater Baltimore Medical Center. The Towson resident was 77. Mr. Fayolle was born and raised in Montreal and earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics from Laval University in Quebec in 1948. He moved to Boston in 1959 when he joined Johnson & Higgins, an insurance company. He briefly worked for Manhattan Life Insurance Co. in New York, and took a position in 1964 as chief international actuary for Bristol-Myers.

WASHINGTON - Senate Democrats, reacting to disclosures that Thomas A. Scully, the former Medicare administrator, had prevented his chief actuary from sharing information with Congress, said yesterday that they believed a federal law had been violated and called on the General Accounting Office to investigate. In a letter signed by 18 senators, including the minority leader, Sen. Tom Daschle of South Dakota, and Sen. John Kerry, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, the lawmakers cited a provision in an appropriations measure that bars using federal money to pay the salary of any employee who "prohibits or prevents, or threatens to prohibit or prevent" another employee from communicating with Congress.

New Positions Comcast names Crooks, Parker vice presidents Comcast Cable Communications appointed Ken Crooks as vice president of operations for the White Marsh-based cable TV and Internet provider in the Maryland/Delaware region and Michael Parker as vice president and general manager for Baltimore operations. Crooks heads various customer services initiatives and oversees competitive strategies. Parker, formerly with Comcast's Greater Detroit region, manages the cable system's daily operations in the city.

SEN. STROM Thurmond of South Carolina just turned 90. Wil he break the Senate longevity records?There are two. One is personal longevity. The late Sen. Theodore Green of Rhode Island was 93 and 1/4 years when he retired in 1961. Strom will pass him by a day on March 7, 1996. The probability that Strom will be alive then is 57 percent. Moreprobable than not.How do I know this? Because Dwight Bartlett told me. Dwight is an old friend who was chief actuary at the Social Security Administration and is now an actuarial and management consultant in Annapolis.

Baltimore City Council President Stephanie C. Rawlings-Blake wants to tap a prominent business-group leader to head a commission examining the city's troubled fire and police pension system. Donald C. Fry, president and CEO of the Greater Baltimore Committee, has accepted an invitation from Rawlings-Blake and City Councilman William H. Cole IV to lead an effort to review a retirement program whose ballooning costs have created what both call a "fiscal crisis." "You want to make sure that these funds are sustainable and you do have enough money to support them," said Fry, a former Harford County state senator who is also heading a panel to award slot-machine licenses in Maryland.

Almost 40 years after he served as president of the NFL Players Association, former Chicago Bears center Mike Pyle is preparing to make a last-ditch stand against the union he helped build. Pyle, 67, is among a large contingent of disgruntled retired NFL players seeking significant pension increases under the league's new collective bargaining agreement. He was scheduled to catch a flight from Chicago today to participate in a closed-door session of 75-plus retired players, most from Baltimore and Washington, to hear from a third-party actuary at Goucher College.

NEW YORK -- When you retire with a pension, your company tells you how big the payment is going to be. But how do you know the figure is right?Miscalculations abound in pension checks. Profit-sharing plans and company-run 401(k)s are especially vulnerable, says Robert Lebenson of Lebenson Actuarial Services in Las Vegas, because the payouts don't have to be double-checked by outside experts. They might be figured by payroll clerks who don't know a lot about how the plan works. Traditional pensions are double-checked, but even there mistakes are made.

WASHINGTON - Shifting his ongoing criticism from Iraq to domestic issues, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy took President Bush to task for misleading the American public on everything from Medicare to education. The Massachusetts Democrat called Iraq "George Bush's Vietnam," and said: "This president has now created the largest credibility gap since Richard Nixon. He has broken the basic bond of trust with the American people." With Bush, Kennedy said, "Truth is the first casualty of policy." Terry Holt, a spokesman for the Bush campaign, said Kennedy was a "hatchet man" for John Kerry, his fellow Massachusetts senator and presumptive Democratic nominee for president.

When Sherlon Lee Ferguson graduated from Morgan State University in 1971, he had a degree in mathematics and no real idea about how to put it to work.Eventually, he settled on becoming an actuary -- a lucrative, if unglamorous, line of work. But while studying for an actuarial exam, Mr. Ferguson was introduced to the field that has propelled him to business success -- environmental and building controls.Oddly, it was a secretary who introduced him to that obscure but lucrative business."She saw I was bored with actuarial work and suggested that I try selling environmental control products," he says.

RENO, Nev. -- Nearly 2 million poor veterans or their impoverished widows are likely missing out on as much as $22 billion a year in pensions from the U.S. government, but the Department of Veterans Affairs has had only limited success in finding them. Widows are hardest hit. According to a VA estimate, only one in seven of the survivors of the nation's deceased soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines who likely could qualify for the pension actually get the monthly checks. And participation in the program is falling, according to a Knight Ridder analysis of VA records.