This story will be updated. 

D.C. lawmakers want to know why the District continues to see a rise of opioid-related overdose deaths, despite millions of dollars being poured in to combat the issue.

“Someone should be accountable for 700 deaths,” said D.C. Council member Vincent Gray, (D-Ward 7), chair of the council’s Committee on Health, during a joint hearing of the Committee on Health and Judiciary and Public Safety on Monday morning. Deaths from overdoses have risen dramatically in the city in recent years; roughly 745 people died from opioids from January 2014 to March 2018, according to D.C. officials.

The hearing comes after a December Washington Post investigation into the District’s opioid epidemic. The Post report detailed D.C.’s response to the growing number of opioid-related deaths, including how officials misspent millions of dollars in federal funding.

The joint hearing will also examine a strategic plan from Mayor Muriel Bowser’s administration called “Live. Long. D.C.”  The plan is aimed at reducing the use of opioids and cutting opioid-related deaths in half by 2020.

Gray said he was frustrated with the lack of leadership with the District’s Department of Behavioral Health, one of the primary agencies tasked with responding to the opioid crisis.

Tanya Royster, the former director of the District’s Department of Behavioral Health, left the Bowser administration in late November. Since then, the director of D.C. Health, LaQuandra Nesbitt, has been heading the department in an interim role.

“Where will the leadership come from?” Gray said, raising questions about how the Mayor’s strategic plan will be implemented.

In 2017, 279 people died in the District from opioids, up from 83 opioid-related deaths in 2014, according to D.C.’s chief medical examiner’s office. Officials say that more than 80 percent of those who have died from overdoses were African American.

The supply of opioids in the District has increasingly been laced with fentanyl, a synthetic opioid up to 100 times more potent than morphine, according to officials. In 2017, 71 percent of fatal opioid overdoses involved fentanyl.

Federal officials with the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) have launched an audit into how the D.C. used federal grant dollars, the Post reported. Gray said he’ll hold another hearing when the audit results are out.

This story originally appeared on WAMU.