A locked door stood in the way of lawmakers curious on Monday to get a glimpse of millions of dollars in unused IT equipment stored in the basement of Docking office building.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle say they are concerned about the equipment’s presence there, and are eager to see the state recoup anything it can for the items, which were acquired as part of a 2013 cloud computing plan that the state scrapped before bringing to fruition.

"I want to get behind that door," said Sen. John Doll, R-Garden City. "I wanted to see what $17 million in bubble wrap looks like."

The group of bipartisan senators and representatives stood outside the door briefly during their tour of Docking, a now largely unused state-owned building that is its own source of controversy.

When the legislators asked to view the computer equipment, officials with the Department of Administration indicated they did not have the key with them and that the room was secured.

"That’s a lot of money sitting behind that door," Rep. Erin Davis, R-Olathe, said after the tour. "I think all of us would like to get our eyes on it."

She described the idea of equipment apparently sitting unused as "quite concerning."

"Especially given the fiscal state of Kansas at this point," she said.

The Legislature is working to resolve a $900 million state budget shortfall for the next two fiscal years.

Senators asked the Department of Administration to provide them by the end of Monday with information about whether the state has found a buyer for the equipment. A bidding period closed last week.

A few lawmakers said they had been told this is the second time the state has tried to sell the equipment.

"I’m really interested in how many bidders, if any, submitted bids for it," said Sen. Vicki Schmidt, R-Topeka.

A spokesman for the Department of Administration on the tour said he wasn’t familiar with details of the effort to sell the equipment, and that questions should be directed to the Kansas Office of Information Technology Services.

The Topeka Capital-Journal contacted OITS seeking more details, including how much money the equipment now stored in the Docking basement was worth when it was purchased.

The equipment relates to a project approved in September 2013 to create Kansas GovCloud. The initiative was launched under one of Gov. Sam Brownback’s previous heads of IT, and later scuttled by the current IT director, who says the plan would have been cost-prohibitive.

Agency reports from recent years list a $33 million price tag for the project, and indicate about $17 million of that was spent by the first quarter of 2016, at which point the initiative was described as "on hold."

IT chief Phil Wittmer told The Capital-Journal in December the project was going to cost $50 million to complete.

Wittmer opted for outsourcing. In 2016, the state inked a five-year, $14 million contract with Illinois-based Ensono.

The Capital-Journal has also sought confirmation regarding how the $17 million was spent and how much could be recouped. In April, OITS told a Senate panel about $10.8 million was spent on leasing IT equipment called vBlocks and $6.3 million was "applied to the Kansas Wide Area Network (WAN) and broadband fiber projects."

The agency said the $6.3 million "therefore is not considered a ‘sunk cost.’ "

Sen. Larry Alley, R-Winfield, expressed hope the state will recover whatever costs it can.

"Plans change here at the Capitol as you know," Alley said. "It takes a while for plans to get developed, and they thought that was the best way to go back then. I’m not going to question their deal, but they changed their mind, found out it was going to be more expensive."

Sen. Marci Francisco, D-Lawrence, suggested the state should have offloaded the unused equipment by now.

"Once we knew we were going to make that change, we should have sold that equipment as quickly as possible and taken a loss," she said. "Because it’s computer equipment, so every three to four months the value is reduced and fewer people would be looking for that same kind of a solution."