I think thats true when a lateral team is asking for work, but he also lumps in requests from higher-up. The assumption would always be that this person knows the priorities better so is in better position to say if work is urgent. The disconnect with these parties is usually that they forgot you are in the middle of "other thing that is more urgent" or that there will be unwanted downstream impact, and so they can be convinced that actually the new thing is not as urgent.