Rumor Has It Forget burden of proof. A new proposal says allegations alone should prevent businesses from receiving federal contracts.

Federal procurement officials may soon be able to preventcompanies from receiving federal contracts simply because ofwhispers that a company has broken labor, occupational-safety orother federal laws. The three big federal procurement agencies (theDepartment of Defense, the General Services Administration andNASA)--who together control the Federal Acquisition Regulation(FAR)--proposed that change in July.

Currently, FAR says a federal procurement officer can keep acompany from receiving a contract only if the company has anunsatisfactory record of compliance with laws and regulations.

In theory, that means a state or federal court or a federalagency has to have found the company guilty of violating a federallaw in order to deny it a federal contract. In practice, however,contracting officers also take into account alleged violations whendeciding whether to award a contract, according to Lynn Rhinehart,associate general counsel for the AFL-CIO. In some circumstances,she says, it may be appropriate for procurement officers to basetheir decisions on alleged violations, or "persuasive evidenceof substantial [and repeated] noncompliance with a law orregulation."