There are signs that the frosty relationship between the University of Kansas and the Legislature could be thawing.

At a Board of Regents workshop last week, KU included just two budget requests for next year. Both seem reasonable — $1.3 million to provide enhanced education services to at-risk, nontraditional students during their freshman year, and $5 million over two years to expand the KU Medical Center’s residency program in Wichita. The requests were modest, and ultimately Chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little said the university could live with the status quo.

“My most basic wish would be not to be cut,” Gray-Little said. “One of the most difficult things is to plan what you’re doing when you don’t know what your resources are.”

KU’s requests pale in comparison with fellow Regents universities Kansas State, seeking $150 million in bonding authority and $10 million in funding for a $574 million College of Agriculture upgrade, and Pittsburg State, seeking $36.2 million for building and program expansions.

Tuesday’s budget workshop was the first step in building a higher education budget for the next fiscal year. Next month, regents will finalize requests for the entire system and submit it to Gov. Sam Brownback’s office.

Brownback’s office will then review the requests, along with requests from all other state agencies and programs, and decide which, if any, will be included in his budget proposal to the 2017 Legislature.

KU’s proposals should get a warmer reception from Brownback and the reshaped Legislature, which will not include more than 20 members of the controlling coalition of ultraconservatives who lost primary battles earlier this month to more moderate Republicans. Among those who lost seats were many frequent KU critics, like Tom Arpke, R-Salina.

Less acrimony would be a welcome change from recent sessions. In 2016 the Legislature cut higher education funding 3 percent. Lawmakers, led by Arpke, attacked KU’s $350 million Central District project because the university obtained bond financing that skirted lawmakers’ approval. In 2015, lawmakers, again led by Arpke, tried to divert millions in funding from the university’s campus in Lawrence to the KU Medical Center campus in Wichita.

The University of Kansas is the state’s flagship university and a critical economic engine. It’s frustrating that the university and the Legislature have of late become adversaries instead of partners in advancing higher education in Kansas for the benefit of everyone.

But hope is on the horizon in 2017. The Republican primary was a rejection of the extremist approach of the past two years. A working coalition of moderate Republicans and Democrats, likely more favorable to KU and higher education in general, now has a chance to seize control of the Legislature in November. That, coupled with a modest funding request from the university, offers the opportunity for a better working relationship between lawmakers and the university.

One can only hope.