It’s amazing, isn’t it, how easily funding can be found for a project when government bureaucrats give a darn.

Minnesota Department of Natural Resources Commissioner Mark Holsten obviously cares about a new state park on Lake Vermilion in northern Minnesota. He proposed last week that the state dedicate $6 million from the state Environmental Trust Fund in each of the next three years to help fund purchase of about 2,500 acres of park land around Lake Vermilion.

“What’s new and different here is trying to be a little bit creative in how we manage the Environmental Trust Fund, to use that to pay off those future bond debts, to leverage those dollars today, put those dollars in the system today so we can go out and make major investments,” Holsten told Minnesota Public Radio.

The commissioner made this announcement in an effort to keep alive the Lake Vermilion land purchase in the midst of other more pressing financial issues that face the state, such as the I-35W bridge collapse and devastating flooding in the southeast part of Minnesota.

Holsten acknowledged the many needs that will have to be addressed by the Legislature when it convenes in January when he said, “They’re going to have to do some creative management and they need ideas like this to accomplish it.”

Translation: This Lake Vermilion land purchase is something the DNR really wants to do and the bureaucrats are willing to use all their math, banking and public relations skills to make it happen.

Sidebar translation: The DNR bureaucrats in St. Paul did not really care that much about a state park in Meeker County.

Despite legislative approval of Greenleaf Lake State Park boundaries, official creation of Greenleaf State Park, and even $500,000 in seed money to begin land purchases, the DNR dragged its feet and refused to act on the state park. For three years.

The company line was that the state just did not have enough money to manage its existing state parks, so the extravagance of adding another state park was certainly not possible.

Now, in just a little more than a month, the DNR’s top bureaucrat has figured out ways to create funding for a land purchase estimated to cost the state some $48 million.

Granted, Holsten was not in the driver’s seat during much of the foot-dragging over Greenleaf. But he has been DNR commissioner since December, and he has served as deputy commissioner since 2003. He should be well aware of all aspects of the Greenleaf State Park activities. Yet, he has ignored this little corner of the world in all his public pronouncements about securing funding for Minnesota’s “first new state park in 30 years” (Greenleaf conveniently forgotten).

We get it. Greenleaf Lake and Meeker County are not high-profile areas like Lake Vermilion and St. Louis County. That is why Greenleaf Lake State Park will quietly become Greenleaf Lake State Recreation Area (maybe?).

We’re told a land purchase for the downgraded Greenleaf area is imminent. It will be the first parcel of what should become the state recreation area.

That’s good, because landowners in the area have been extremely patient in holding on to their property instead of selling out to developers during the state’s inaction.

It’s just too bad the DNR’s St. Paul bureaucrats did not — do not — care as much about a state park in this area as they do about a much more expensive one in northeastern Minnesota.