Photo by ssteege1.

At a breakfast with the D.C. Council last week, Mayor Vince Gray announced that the District was already facing “spending pressures” to the tune of between $35 and $41 million for 2012, hinting that his administration would continue finding ways to save money as the fiscal year drags on.

He seems to have found one way employed by his predecessors — a freeze on all new hires and city-funded travel.

The Washington Business Journal’s Mike Neibauer reported late last week that Gray had signed an executive order freezing hiring, travel and outside training for city agencies. The only exceptions will be given to positions funded by federal grants.

In October 2010, then Mayor Adrian Fenty ordered a similar freeze as the city faced a $175 million budget shortfall. But as WAMU reported, travel freezes don’t necessarily mean that travel stops altogether — in the months after Fenty declared the freeze, some $70,000 was spent on travel by 20 different agencies.

In September, D.C. CFO Natwar Gandhi predicted that revenue projections in 2012 were looking up, but that they would slow between 2013 and 2015. The District just tackled from a $322 million budget deficit earlier this year.