The past year has been a busy one, to say the least.
By the end of January last year, the new administration had already issued more than 50 executive orders.
“In February and March (2025), the executive orders were just coming out repeatedly,” King said.
We are seeing the most “radical changes” in federal contracting since the early 1980s, when the Competition in Contracting Act set the stage for modern contracting, said Sabra Tomb, who directs training programs and strategic business development for the University of Dayton School of Law. She also oversees the university’s government contracting and procurement master’s degree program.
“We are, I think, truly in a different era,” Tomb said.
‘You don’t want to burn bridges’
In separate interviews, King and Tomb both noted that new presidential administrations always put their own stamps on contracting and policy.
“I don’t think it’s more hostile than it used to be,” King said. But he does think contractors and procurement professionals have been uncertain at times about how to navigate what felt like a blizzard of EOs and changes.
King said his clients found themselves wrestling with the DOGE — Department of Government Efficiency — terminations of billions in contracts, grants and real estate pacts.
When a company’s entire business revolves around a federal contract, cancellations derail livelihoods.
“That really hurt a lot of our clients,” King said.
When a contract is terminated, a business can challenge the move or propose a settlement, King said. A government contracting officer can terminate a contract even if the agreement has not been violated, if in the officer’s “business judgement,” a contract’s termination is in the government’s best interest, he said.
“They do not have to cite a reason,” King said. “But it still has to be within his personal business judgement.”
Such a settlement can seek to recover costs or money still owed for past work. Fewer than a dozen of King’s Dayton-area business clients have chosen to seek a post-cancellation settlement that recognizes the government’s authority to cancel the contract.
Contractors find themselves walking a fine line: Challenge a termination or stay in the good graces of a government agency or department.
Litigation is expensive. So are severed relationships.
Said King: “That is a balance that a lot of contractors, not just our clients, but a lot of contractors around the community have been balancing. You don’t want to burn bridges.”
Much of what the Trump administration has done is admirable, King said.
“They are trying to do their best to essentially decrease burden, decrease burdensome regulations, decrease barriers for business,” he said. “That, if done correctly, will positively impact a lot of the contractors around here, particularly the small businesses.”
Before joining UD, Tomb worked as an attorney-advisor for the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.
A deregulatory agenda, a “back-to-basics” rewrite of procurement rules, and other changes have come at a far faster pace than many expected, she said.
Today, DOGE auditors and administration stalwarts expect the government to justify spending, Tomb said, pointing to the rise of “neo-primes,” companies like Space X who build products often on their own dime before selling them to the government.
There’s nothing wrong with those changes, she said. “But it’s been the swiftness of the actions that has been so jarring.”
Early last year, she witnessed “anxiety that was very new and different” among federal government employees — anxiety about losing jobs and about the outcome of policy changes.
But most contractors quickly adapted.
“I think people are sort of resolved to do what they need to do to do their jobs effectively in the new landscape,” she said.
Scott Koorndyk, president of The Entrepreneurs Center in Dayton, believes the Air Force is trying to get more non-traditional companies engaged. They’re trying to open the contracting “aperture,” as he sees it.
But the time it takes to get a business “on contract” — to get the point when it can start billing the government — is stretching out, he said.
He also sees contracting officers who aren’t always aligned with current Air Force missions or priorities. Small businesses are going on contract, but follow-on inquiries may reveal that the Air Force isn’t always interested in a product’s evolution or a contract’s next step.
Some contracting officers “are as far away from the front-line solider or airman as they can possibly be,” Koorndyk said.
SBIR concerns
“I fervently hope that the issue is resolved soon,” he said. “It is really critical.”
Representatives of two allied organizations, the Dayton Development Coalition and the Dayton Defense trade group, declined to comment at length.
“I expect that the Department of Defense’s new emphasis on speed, combined with the acquisition reform measures Congress passed last year, will affect local contractors but it’s too early to see just how that will play out,” said Michael Gessel, vice president of federal government programs for the coalition.
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