Part of 'complying with the governments own laws' is not making bogus calls. He said himself it happened more than once a month. There's a real cost to dispatching those fire trucks.
The fine is pretty standard practice to discourage repeated nuisance calls. Resources are not infinite and if time is spent on a nuisance call when a real call is delayed, you end up with avoidable injuries and even deaths.
How big were the fines? Were they ever challenged in court?