Following the letter of the law doesn’t always allow you to follow its spirit. For a case-in-point on that lesson, look no further than the state’s recent audit of the Slippery Rock Volunteer Fire Relief Association.

A support organization for Slippery Rock Volunteer Fire Company and Rescue Team, last year the association spent several tens of thousands of dollars on upgrades at the company’s ambulance building — purchasing things like a new antenna, non-slip floor coating and other safety upgrades.

Those are good investments, correct? It’s important for our first responders to have good equipment and a safe environment from which to dispatch to emergency situations.

That might make sense to most people, but not to the state Department of the Auditor General, which returned an annual audit of the association that ordered the department to pay back more than $36,000 it said had been improperly spent.

How so? Well, it’s simple really: regardless of the fact that the department operates as one unit — a combination fire and EMS agency — in the eyes of state officials it’s actually two, a fire department and an ambulance service.

Because of this, the association can’t spend any money on the ambulance service — despite the fact that they are, in actuality, one solitary department — because state law requires that the association only spend money on the fire department.

Confused yet? We are too — not because the regulations are obtuse, but because the way they are being interpreted is needlessly narrow and overly reductive.

Here’s an excerpt from Act 118, the state code which lays out how relief association’s can spend its money: “to purchase safeguards for preserving life, health and safety of volunteer firefighters to ensure their availability to participate in the volunteer fire service.”

Now, given that firefighters and EMS personnel operate as one department in Slippery Rock and are likely co-mingling throughout the course of their duties, doesn’t it make sense that safety upgrades at the building that houses the department’s ambulances — where volunteer firefighters surely find themselves from time to time, either during an emergency situation or otherwise — would fall within this purview?

Won’t these upgrades allow volunteer firefighters to perform their duties and increase their safety on the job? Isn’t that the intent of these purchases?

Apparently not in the view of the state auditors who ordered the department to pay back these funds — which is too bad. Because they may have the letter of the law on their side, but in our view not the spirit.

At a time when volunteer fire companies across the state are struggling with membership and financial pressures, it’s more important than ever that communities have faith that their departments — and associated groups that offer fundraising and other help — are being run appropriately.

In our view the department and the association did nothing wrong, and residents should have no cause for concern.