What a difference a few months can make.

At the end of the 2015 legislative session, the business community was angry. Gov. Dannel P. Malloy had signed tax increases into law after saying on the campaign trail in 2014 they would not be needed. Worse for businesses, the new and higher taxes were largely focused on them.

There was also concern that neither the legislature nor the governor had done enough to tackle the fundamental problems that continued to drive up the cost of government and lead to ever high taxes. Most fundamentally, the business community said the instability of constant budget crises and looming deficits into the future raised concerns about the increased taxes and fees they might face in the near future to pay for it all.

The bottom line was a fiscal climate that was discouraging businesses from investing, expanding, moving to or even staying in Connecticut.

In sharp contrast, the business community reacted with optimism to the austerity budget proposal presented by Malloy on Wednesday at the start of a new legislative session.

Malloy proposed dropping the 2017 fiscal-year budget to $19.8 billion from the $20.4 billion the legislature had planned to spend, cutting state agency expenditures for all but essential services by 5.75 percent and approving a plan to make the state pension plan sustainable without busting future budgets.

He also proposed elimination of the personal property tax on companies with less than $10,000 worth of personal property.

“Governor Malloy’s latest proposal takes a solid stride down a path to greater fiscal responsibility,” stated the Connecticut Business and Industry Association on its website.

“It promotes lean strategies, better use of IT, a greater focus on core missions (rather than doing everything for everybody), and efforts to get real outcome measures. In short, this plan reflects a lot of the recommendations businesses have been pushing for over the last several years,” said the CBIA. “At first pass this is a far superior plan to anything we have seen presented in many years.”

Joining the chorus was Andrew Markowski, state director of the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), a lobbying group focused on small businesses.

“Today Governor Malloy said that the days of spending outside of state revenue are over,” wrote Markowski. “Today’s remarks were a great start and demonstrated a tremendous shift in the thinking that has traditionally come out of the capitol.”

Whether the business community is as happy at the end of the session remains to be seen. But economic growth will depend in large measure on whether businesses have the confidence to invest. On Wednesday there was some uptick in that confidence.