The panel that’s been given the job of helping to choose Baltimore County’s next inspector general got down to work Thursday afternoon and quickly moved its first meeting behind closed doors.

The panel is in the middle of a controversy over why the current IG, Kelly Madigan, wasn’t reappointed to the position.

Before going into executive session to start making their way through 23 resumes, the five panel members were advised by Baltimore County Human Resources Director Renee Coleman to recommend three to six finalists to County Executive Kathy Klausmeier.

“We found that this is best practice but this is at the discretion of the panel,” Coleman said.

Klausmeier’s chief of staff, Amanda Conn, described the panel’s job as a routine vetting of applicant qualifications.

Conn said, “This is going to be very familiar.”

Except that one of the applicants is Inspector General Madigan.

She and others have questioned why she wasn’t just reappointed to a second term.

Klausmeier said that according to the county charter, she had to allow others to apply for the position. But Madigan and others countered that Klausmeier was misreading the charter and that the inspector general could have simply been reappointed.

Klausmeier did not ask County Attorney James Benjamin to weigh in on the disagreement over what the charter said about reappointing the inspector general.

Klausmeier decided on a panel to consider the applicants for the IG position following the blowback she received for not reappointing Madigan.

Klausmeier will make a nomination to the county council, but a majority of them say they will only confirm Madigan.