Democratic Colorado Gov. Jared Polis is all for “making government more efficient” — just not the way the federal government is going about it.

That was just one of Polis’ pushbacks against the new Trump administration during Blue Light News’s Governors Summit on Thursday. Democratic governors across the country have signaled an eagerness to partner with President Donald Trump on certain issues, though they have not held back from criticizing the president in his first weeks back at the White House.

Polis — who at times has provided contrarian views to his fellow Democrats, like when he voiced support for now-Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — indicated some common ground with the administration’s efforts to target “waste at federal agencies,” and suggested that states can learn from efforts being made at the federal level to do so.

But the current moves from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency are “not necessarily the best way to get … a better outcome for less money,” he argued in an interview with Blue Light News’s Eugene Daniels, proposing that “a better way to do it would be more zero-based budgeting.”

“What is it that we need to accomplish with this agency? A, do we even need to accomplish it anymore, or is it counterproductive? B, if we do need to accomplish it: pretend it doesn’t exist — how do you create the most efficient possible system to do that for the least money, and to do it the best way from the ground up? And then kind of juxtapose and replace the old with the new,” he said. “The way that they seem to be doing it is just sort of tearing down the old without necessarily having a more efficient way of doing it.”

Polis, who took the helm as chair of the bipartisan National Governors Association last year, touted repealing more than 200 old state executive orders and looking to remove “unnecessary rules and regulations” in Colorado. He said that federal efforts to make “compliance easier in certain areas” would benefit states’ pushes to make their governments more efficient as well.

“We literally have employees that just sit there to comply with federal requirements, so I’d love to find a way where if they make the federal requirements easier, we can then downsize the state people that are simply filing federal paperwork as their entire jobs,” he said.

Polis also shared thoughts on other areas in which the Trump administration could be doing things differently, including on tariffs, which he called a “self-inflicted wound that would raise prices, increase inflation and destroy jobs.”

The governor is often outspoken — especially online, with his notable social media presence. (“I had to learn what commercial media was,” he said on Thursday. “I had no idea what the networks were or anything, because that’s where I live, online.”) In November, he shared his support on X for Kennedy as Trump’s HHS pick, which drew some blowback from some other Democrats.

Polis said on Thursday that he does not agree with Kennedy on “some of the nutty stuff he believes,” and clarified that he is “obviously pro-vaccine.” But he said he is “excited because he’s going to shake up HHS.”

“I hope he’s not too controlled by Republican special interests, but they need to let him go to really focus on the health of the American people,” Polis said. “I take him at his word. Obviously, I would oppose if he in any way interferes with people’s ability to protect themselves from deadly diseases. I would be among the first to criticize that.”

But despite bolstering his national presence over the years, the former member of Congress is mum on his plans for 2028. At last year’s POLITICO’s Governors Summit, Polis, who is term-limited in 2026, didn’t rule out a presidential bid. When asked about potential presidential aspirations on Thursday, he said he is “really focused on the job that I have.”

“I don’t have any plans to even think about that,” he said. When asked whether he was taking the possibility of running for president off the table, Polis responded that it “wasn’t even on the table.”