Balanced state budgets? All lies.

When state politicians tell us they “balanced” their budgets by July 1 just count on the fact they are most likely lying.

Some are telling little lies, some big lies, and a few are so far gone they’re not even really bothering to lie about it anymore.

Governors in New York — three months overdue on passing its Fiscal 2011 budget — California and Illinois lie pathetically like public leaders caught in the spotlight of infidelity. They know we know they’re lying. And we know they know we know. It’s just all part of a charade that soon must fall apart under the weight of reality.

Against any claim of balance when their fiscal years flip over, apply some hidden but very real debits.

One huge inescapable debt is unfunded retirement promises.

According to a study released Wednesday by the Mercatus Center, states owed workers $3 trillion on pension promises as of 2008. Things have only gotten worse since.

Late last year a Government Accountability Office study of official numbers – which most likely are lies in and of themselves – revealed states and major cities are at least $530 billion in debt on retiree health-care promises as of 2008. The report stated emphatically, “The total for unfunded … liabilities is higher ….”

Even taking these best-case numbers and spreading the load evenly, taxpayers take an average hit of almost $71 billion in each state. That means by any reasonable deviation from the mean, no state can have a balanced budget.

To fake them, politicians for years have been hiding expenses and pushing them into a future they hoped would not arrive until well after they had enriched themselves at the public trough and slipped away in the night.

Now the bills are coming due. A good example is New Jersey, where leaders patted themselves on the back this week for hammering out a balanced $29.38 billion 2011 budget compromise.

Liars. They did it without paying the $3 billion minimum required annual contribution to state pension plans. That’s like saying you balanced your household budget by not making car payments.

Making it worse is the fact that the minimum payment is calculated on a delusional 8 percent return on investment forever.

In Fiscal 2012 New Jersey taxpayers will owe workers at least $6.5 billion, more than 20 percent of the operating budget. A year later it will equal more than a third just to make the minimum payment.

That’s just for pensions. It does not include paying anything on more than $51 billion GAO found in retirement health-care promises politicians failed to fund.

All of this is real debt. It must be paid. The New Jersey Supreme Court decision Wednesday rejecting a teachers union 2003 suit seeking to force annual pension fund contributions has nothing to do with taxpayer obligation to pick up the tab whether state government sets the money aside or not.

New Jersey voters face a ballot question in November on amending the state Constitution to require annual funding for state pensions. It must include a prohibition against lying about the expense.

So should every state. To one degree or another, these lies prevail in all. It’s time to end the lies.

Now is the time for truth. We must force state leaders to face it.

Frank Keegan is a national editor for The Franklin Center on Government and Public Integrity. frank.keegan@franklincenterhq.org