April 30, 2026 • 6 mins
Paul Corvino sits down with Adam Miller. Miller is a tech entrepreneur, nonprofit leader, and Democratic candidate for Mayor of Los Angeles.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is Meet the Candidates with Division President of iHeartMedia
Paul Corvino. Today I'm joined by Adam Miller, Democrat, running
for a mayor of the City of Los Angeles. Welcome Adam,
Thanks for having me. Paul, great to have you here.
Let's find out a little bit more about you. Where'd
you grow up? I grew up in New Jersey, New Jersey?
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Whereabouts Flanders, New Jersey, small town straight west of New
York City, out near Pennsylvania, close to Pennsylvania. That's right
right on the other side of the Hudson. Okay, well,
I'm a New Yorker.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Grew up in Westchester County, right across the tappan Zee Bridge. Okay,
know it well, So New Jersey. When did you come
to Los Angeles.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Campe to LA thirty five years ago? To go to
grad school at UCLA. I did a JDNBA UCLA, So
a law degree and a business degree for grad school, a.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Law degree and a business degree. And what are your
first jobs out of school?
Speaker 2 (00:51):
So my very first job was working in finance, where
I help companies go public, do mergers and acquisitions, and
do financings. And then I started my company, Cornerstone.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Tell us about Cornerstone.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
So Cornerstone started my apartment with the idea that we
could use the Internet to improve access to education on
a global basis, specifically for adults. And I grew that
company for ten years as a private company, took it
public in twenty eleven, and then ran it for ten
years as a public company CEO, and we grew that
(01:29):
business to three thousand employees in twenty five countries, serving
one hundred million people and delivering over two billion classes.
So I've been running things for thirty five years, either
as a CEO, the general manager, or the chairman.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Tell us how you think that could help you as
mayor of the City of Los Angeles.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Well, the city of La unfortunately is an incredible city,
but unfortunately is broken right now. We're broken in almost
every dimension, whether we're talking about homelessness, housing, public station infrastructure,
the streets, the street lights, the sidewalks, the trash. We
have problems everywhere, and a lot of these problems are operational.
(02:10):
So having somebody with operational experience that knows how to lead,
knows how to be an executive, knows how to run
a budget, knows how to optimize finances is incredibly important
in turning the city around.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
What would you say is the number one problem facing
the city.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
I'd say there's four big ones. The number one probably
is affordability because that leads to a lot of the
other issues that we have.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
What are some many solutions to solve the affordability problem.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
The reason the city is unaffordable today is because of
the cost of housing, and the only way to solve
that problem is with more housing. It's a supply and
demand problem. We have relatively fixed demand and not enough supply.
We have not built enough housing, and unfortunately we're going
in the wrong direction. We're building at the low level
(03:00):
in a decade at a time that we have a
housing shortage. So we have to make the city much
more friendly to real estate developers to enable all types
of housing, affordable housing, workforce housing, and market housing.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
The city more more friendly. Is it less regulations, tax incentives?
What do you think will do it?
Speaker 2 (03:24):
So there's a number of things American do themselves. So
I would immediately shrink the amount of time it takes
to get permits here by eighty plus percent. I would
make it much easier to get entitled on a new project.
I would make it more predictable to get projects done.
Right now, it's very unclear how long it's going to
(03:46):
take to get an inspection done, how long it's going
to take DWP to hook up electricity when your project's done.
We can fix all of that. There's also opportunities to
make financing easier, working with the state and the county
to help developers get more financing, and really making the
city much more friendly to real estate development. Right now,
(04:09):
la is one of the worst places in America to build,
and I'm going to make it one of the best.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
You said that there were four major problems facing the city.
What are the other three?
Speaker 2 (04:19):
Homelessness, public safety, infrastructure.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
On homelessness, homelessness.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
Number one, we have to do a better job of prevention.
If your house is flooding, the first thing you should
do is turn off the faucet, and we're not doing that.
So we have to have better allocation to prevention. I
start an organization called Better Angels, which is now running
the most effective eviction prevention program in the county. And
(04:45):
we've kept over four thousand Angelinos who already had eviction notices.
We're already almost out the door, housed and off the street.
So it's been very effective.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
We've tackled affordability, homelessness.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
One of the next public safety, We got to double
the patrols in LA We have half the number of
patrols of most other major cities per capita. We need
more cops on the street out there responding timely to incidents.
We also need more innovation. There's a lot of technology
we can use to get better at solving crimes and
(05:21):
dealing with issues. We can do much better on that front.
And what was the fourth infrastructure? We see this all
the time right the streets are breaking, the sidewalks, the
street lights, we have trash everywhere. Again, operational issues. We
could do a much much better job of doing these
things more efficiently. Maintaining our streets, maintaining our sidewalks. We
(05:46):
should be doing five hundred miles a year of street
repair and this year we're going to do twenty. Last
year we did basically zero, So we're not keeping up
with maintenance, and what that means we're digging ourselves into
a deeper and deeper hole.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
Of the four issues that you're focusing on that you
just mentioned, which you think has the lowest hanging through
the easiest to attack on day one.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
Oh, I think you could tack all four on day one.
Probably the easiest is homelessness. There's a lot of things
you can do, but housing. When you talk about permitting,
you could do that day one as well.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
No, thank you so much, Adam. Once again, this is
Paul Corvino, Division president of iHeartMedia and Los Angeles. We're
talking with Adam Miller, the Democrat running for mayor of
Los Angeles. Thank you so much for coming on the show,
and thank you for listening to another episode of Meet
the Candidates.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
Thank you for having me
This is Meet the Candidates with Division President of iHeartMedia
Paul Corvino. Today I'm joined by Adam Miller, Democrat, running
for a mayor of the City of Los Angeles. Welcome Adam,
Thanks for having me. Paul, great to have you here.
Let's find out a little bit more about you. Where'd
you grow up? I grew up in New Jersey, New Jersey?
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Whereabouts Flanders, New Jersey, small town straight west of New
York City, out near Pennsylvania, close to Pennsylvania. That's right
right on the other side of the Hudson. Okay, well,
I'm a New Yorker.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Grew up in Westchester County, right across the tappan Zee Bridge. Okay,
know it well, So New Jersey. When did you come
to Los Angeles.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Campe to LA thirty five years ago? To go to
grad school at UCLA. I did a JDNBA UCLA, So
a law degree and a business degree for grad school, a.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Law degree and a business degree. And what are your
first jobs out of school?
Speaker 2 (00:51):
So my very first job was working in finance, where
I help companies go public, do mergers and acquisitions, and
do financings. And then I started my company, Cornerstone.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Tell us about Cornerstone.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
So Cornerstone started my apartment with the idea that we
could use the Internet to improve access to education on
a global basis, specifically for adults. And I grew that
company for ten years as a private company, took it
public in twenty eleven, and then ran it for ten
years as a public company CEO, and we grew that
(01:29):
business to three thousand employees in twenty five countries, serving
one hundred million people and delivering over two billion classes.
So I've been running things for thirty five years, either
as a CEO, the general manager, or the chairman.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Tell us how you think that could help you as
mayor of the City of Los Angeles.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Well, the city of La unfortunately is an incredible city,
but unfortunately is broken right now. We're broken in almost
every dimension, whether we're talking about homelessness, housing, public station infrastructure,
the streets, the street lights, the sidewalks, the trash. We
have problems everywhere, and a lot of these problems are operational.
(02:10):
So having somebody with operational experience that knows how to lead,
knows how to be an executive, knows how to run
a budget, knows how to optimize finances is incredibly important
in turning the city around.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
What would you say is the number one problem facing
the city.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
I'd say there's four big ones. The number one probably
is affordability because that leads to a lot of the
other issues that we have.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
What are some many solutions to solve the affordability problem.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
The reason the city is unaffordable today is because of
the cost of housing, and the only way to solve
that problem is with more housing. It's a supply and
demand problem. We have relatively fixed demand and not enough supply.
We have not built enough housing, and unfortunately we're going
in the wrong direction. We're building at the low level
(03:00):
in a decade at a time that we have a
housing shortage. So we have to make the city much
more friendly to real estate developers to enable all types
of housing, affordable housing, workforce housing, and market housing.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
The city more more friendly. Is it less regulations, tax incentives?
What do you think will do it?
Speaker 2 (03:24):
So there's a number of things American do themselves. So
I would immediately shrink the amount of time it takes
to get permits here by eighty plus percent. I would
make it much easier to get entitled on a new project.
I would make it more predictable to get projects done.
Right now, it's very unclear how long it's going to
(03:46):
take to get an inspection done, how long it's going
to take DWP to hook up electricity when your project's done.
We can fix all of that. There's also opportunities to
make financing easier, working with the state and the county
to help developers get more financing, and really making the
city much more friendly to real estate development. Right now,
(04:09):
la is one of the worst places in America to build,
and I'm going to make it one of the best.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
You said that there were four major problems facing the city.
What are the other three?
Speaker 2 (04:19):
Homelessness, public safety, infrastructure.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
On homelessness, homelessness.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
Number one, we have to do a better job of prevention.
If your house is flooding, the first thing you should
do is turn off the faucet, and we're not doing that.
So we have to have better allocation to prevention. I
start an organization called Better Angels, which is now running
the most effective eviction prevention program in the county. And
(04:45):
we've kept over four thousand Angelinos who already had eviction notices.
We're already almost out the door, housed and off the street.
So it's been very effective.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
We've tackled affordability, homelessness.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
One of the next public safety, We got to double
the patrols in LA We have half the number of
patrols of most other major cities per capita. We need
more cops on the street out there responding timely to incidents.
We also need more innovation. There's a lot of technology
we can use to get better at solving crimes and
(05:21):
dealing with issues. We can do much better on that front.
And what was the fourth infrastructure? We see this all
the time right the streets are breaking, the sidewalks, the
street lights, we have trash everywhere. Again, operational issues. We
could do a much much better job of doing these
things more efficiently. Maintaining our streets, maintaining our sidewalks. We
(05:46):
should be doing five hundred miles a year of street
repair and this year we're going to do twenty. Last
year we did basically zero, So we're not keeping up
with maintenance, and what that means we're digging ourselves into
a deeper and deeper hole.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
Of the four issues that you're focusing on that you
just mentioned, which you think has the lowest hanging through
the easiest to attack on day one.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
Oh, I think you could tack all four on day one.
Probably the easiest is homelessness. There's a lot of things
you can do, but housing. When you talk about permitting,
you could do that day one as well.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
No, thank you so much, Adam. Once again, this is
Paul Corvino, Division president of iHeartMedia and Los Angeles. We're
talking with Adam Miller, the Democrat running for mayor of
Los Angeles. Thank you so much for coming on the show,
and thank you for listening to another episode of Meet
the Candidates.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
Thank you for having me
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