Agreed. And moreover, the developer already credentializing in a section of code (like working on the router for the past week) is the one that's likely to smash through some outstanding TODOs in that section as well.
What doesn't seem to work is to turn every tiny TODO into an issue and then hope someone decides to recredentialize in some possibly large code just to fix some small issues because they stumbled upon it on the issue tracker.
When working on X, and noticing another piece of work Y, thinking too hard about Y can break context/concentration and your focus on X.
Focus needs to be preserved, which is why you drop TODO markers, rather than "just doing them" - you are already doing something, doing something else means not doing what you are meant to be doing now - not pragmatic at all.
Nothing wrong with referencing tickets in TODOs, except when references go stale. It's easier to just do periodic 'TODO' searches on mature code.