Officials who put the nonprofit Madera Volunteer Fire Co. in rural Pennsylvania into bankruptcy on Tuesday urged a judge to let them spend restricted cash needed for “[hosting] bingo games, fuel, propane, telephone services, insurance and other normal and necessary costs of business,” the Wall Street Journal Bankruptcy Beat blog reported yesterday. The fire department has contracts to provide fire protection to Bigler Township, Pa., and Knox Township, Pa., but most of its $280,000 in revenue last year came from bingo and other fundraisers like poker runs, an annual gun raffle and community dinners.
